


Where the Rippling Waters Go

by littleblackfox



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Practical Magic, Biphobia, Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Witch Bucky Barnes, single parent bucky barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-04 16:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21200537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackfox/pseuds/littleblackfox
Summary: Where the rippling waters gocast a stone, the truth you'll know.- The Wiccan Rede





	1. Rosemary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BeBeafortheWeekend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeBeafortheWeekend/gifts).

> For Zee, who never fails to make me smile, even on days when it seems impossible.  
Many thanks to Panaceaknits for beta reading, all screw-ups are my own

Their mother had never talked about the Aunts.  
It wasn’t something that Bucky noticed. He was just a kid, after all, more interested in dinosaurs and digging in the mud and sneaking up on his sister. He didn’t care about curses or distant relatives, his world was cartoons and comics, and winding Becky up until she chased him around the apartment until Mama told them to knock it off.  
The Aunts were just names on christmas and birthday cards, notable for being the only birthday cards that were addressed to them separately. Since they were twins, everyone else would write the names Bucky and Becky on a single card, so Becky got cards with cowboys and astronauts, and Bucky got cards with unicorns and fairies, but the Aunts sent them their own cards, the names Peggy and Angie written at the bottom in neat, looping script. Bucky still has the button that was fastened to the front of his last card, a bright yellow number 7 on a green background.  
The Aunts didn’t come to visit at Christmas, and the twins didn’t go visit them in the summer. Maybe it would have been easier on them all if they had.

But it wouldn’t. Nothing would have made it easier. And then it didn’t matter, Mama was gone and the apartment was going to have another family living in it, and Bucky would never stop to stroke the ginger cat that sat on the stoop across the street on his way to school.  
The drive doesn’t make it easier either, taking them away from Brooklyn and school and the ginger cat, south to the line where New York becomes Connecticut, and then onto a dirt track that ploughs into the sea. There is an island at the end of the road, with a rocky shore and sprawl of green trees, and hidden among them is a house.  
They climb out of the taxi, and Becky grips Bucky’s hand, pink-painted nails digging into his palm, while everything they owned is taken out of the trunk and piled up by the gate. The driver, seeing the front door of the oak-framed house start to open, clambers into his cab and drives away like the Devil himself is watching.  
The house is like something out of a fairy tale, ivy crawling up the walls and flowers blooming in the garden. No wonder the cab driver left in such a hurry. 

The front door, black-painted with a silver horseshoe hanging over an ornate doorknocker, opens and out steps a woman. She doesn’t look like a witch. She has red lipstick and brown hair that curls loose about her shoulders, and a black cat in her arms. Behind her appears another woman, her fair hair tightly curled. She pushes past the other Aunt, striding down the path to meet them, and places a gentle hand on each of their shoulders.  
“Well, ain’t you a pair of cutie-pies?” she announces in a thick New York accent. “Come on.”  
They walk with her up the path, fragrant herbs and tall spikes of flowers, purple and white and blue, rising up either side of the paving stones. In all the years he lives on the island, Bucky will never forget that moment. Of reaching out to touch a flower, the fat, languid bees jostling the blooms and the sweet smell of lavender, or his Aunts guiding the two of them up the steps and into their new home with talk of chocolate cake and candlelight.

~⛤~

Almost twenty years later Bucky finds himself standing on the same road, looking up at the same grand old house. Well, not everything is the same. The conservatory he’d helped build is shabby and in need of repair. The carpenter had taken a shine to the quiet boy in a house full of women and gave him a hammer, showing him where to put each nail. He’d helped to paint the walls inside a sunny yellow when it was done. The greenhouse out back was his work too, a few years later and he was few inches taller.  
Where a taxi had dropped them off before, now it’s his own pickup, rusting in places but still reliable, a cloth bag filled with seeds and dried leaves hanging from the rear view mirror. And this time instead of his sister’s small hand clasped in his it is his daughter and son. They stare up at him with round eyes, pressing against his legs and tugging on his fingers, Wanda, with her cherry red hair and fairy wings, and Pietro in his silver spaceman costume. He’d taken off the helmet at least, and left it on the back seat.  
They had gotten some strange looks driving out to the island, a grim-faced man with red-rimmed eyes and several days of stubble and an astronaut and a fairy princess as his passengers. He could have made the twins dress up in their best clothes to meet the Aunts, but they were scared, and those brightly coloured pieces of polyester were armour to them, were their magic rings and secret spells to ward off danger. They were no less effective for being covered in glitter.

“Daddy.” Wanda tugs so hard that Bucky swears he hears his thumb go pop. “I wanna go home.”  
“I know sweetheart,” Bucky says softly. “But this is going to be home now.”  
“I want Mom,” Pietro says loudly.  
“I know,” Bucky says, pulling them closer. _She doesn’t want you_. He catches himself in the lie, feeling ashamed, and hunkers down until he’s at their level. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but it’s going to be okay. I mean we have each other, right?” He musters up a smile, and they nod slowly. Yes, they have each other. “Your mom just needs some time, okay? She loves you both so, so much, I promise.”  
_It’s me she doesn’t want._  
Bucky leads them by the hand up the garden path, pointing out the tall spires of foxglove and mullein and larkspur, things he could never have space to grow in their cramped Brooklyn apartment. The twins repeat the names dutifully, cautiously touching the flowers as they pass.  
Bucky picks a snapdragon, holding it carefully between finger and thumb, and when the kids are watching he squeezes gently, making the flower open up and close like the maw of a tiny, peach-coloured creature. Wanda smiles for what feels like the first time in days, taking the flower and making it bite Pietro’s ear.  
Something stirs in Bucky’s chest, something far too small and fragile to be called hope. A seed of something, sending out thready little roots. He does not study it too closely, fearing that nothing could ever grow in the barren earth of his heart again.

The front door opens, and the Aunts come out onto the top step. Peggy looks so much older, though it has only been, what? Five years since he last saw her? Ten? Her grey streaked hair is still loosely curled. Beside her Angie smiles, new wrinkles lining her kind face.  
Bucky hadn’t meant to leave it so long. He hadn’t meant to go running off to Brooklyn without so much as a note. And in the years that had followed, all the letters and photos and thank you cards from the kids, he had meant to bring the kids up for a visit, he had just never found the time. And now here he is, a supplicant on their doorstep, and again they have opened their home and hearts to innocent children caught up in the Barnes curse.  
“Oh, well you must be Wanda!” Angie announces, coming down the steps to greet the twins. “What beautiful wings, c’mon give us a twirl!”  
Wanda dutifully spins a full turn on her toes, plastic wings shimmering, and Angie claps her hands together in delight before turning to Bucky’s son. “And Buzz Aldrin here must be Pietro.”  
Pietro gives her a clumsy little salute, his silver top crinkling.  
“Well, you’d better dock at the station for resupply,” Angie says brightly, before turning to Bucky and laying a hand on his stubbled cheek. “We have chocolate cake waiting,” she murmurs, and his heart cracks and heals and cracks again in the space between one breath and another.  
“Good to see you, Aunt Angie.”  
“Damn right it is.” She gives him a hard little kiss on his bristly cheek. “Come on, now people!” She claps her hands together. “Quick march before your Aunt Pegs gets all the cake before you.”  
That has the kids moving, scrambling up the steps and into the house, drawn by the smell of chocolate and fudge. Angie gives Peggy a peck on the cheek before following the kids inside, leaving Peggy on the doorstep with Bucky.  
“Hey, Aunt Peggy,” Bucky says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry, I should’ve-”  
“Well, you’re here now,” Peggy says crisply. She doesn’t comment on his appearance, or why he’s here. For all her native British stiff upper lip, Peggy has a heart like a horse, steadfast and loyal. She takes a step back, ushering him into the house. “Come on. Angie wasn’t kidding about that cake, I am famished.”  
The door closes behind them, and the house welcomes him home.

*

Bucky can hear the little boots clomping up the stairs even under the weight of duvet. A moment later Wanda clambers onto the bed. She is alone, no doubt Pietro is running the Aunts ragged downstairs, and her climbing disturbs Dugan, the massive ginger tomcat sprawled across the foot of the bed. He raises his head an yowls, before settling back to sleep.  
“Daddy?” Wanda pokes at the lumpy duvet, like a pin the tail on the donkey game, only it’s jab the finger in Daddy’s thigh instead. He grumbles, shifting out of the path of her finger, but she has locked on to her prey, and scrambles up the bed, sitting right on his kidney with the accuracy gifted only to children and cats.  
“Oof!” Bucky rolls over, and she rolls with him, engulfed in blankets. She tugs at them until Bucky’s face, all stubbled chin and greasy hair, is visible.  
“Hey, baby girl,” Bucky murmurs, squinting at the light filtering through the curtains. The room smells of lavender, and when he glances at the bedside table he sees the Aunts have left a vase filled with tall spires of purple blooms. There’s probably a few stems of meadowsweet in there too. “You need me to drive you to school?”  
“No.” Wanda shakes her head. “Aunt Peggy is taking us.”  
“Mn’kay.” Bucky yawns, rubbing his hand over his face, bristles catching under his nails.  
“Maybe today you could have a bath?” Wanda pokes him in the chest. “You smell like a raccoon.”  
Bucky pauses, hand still pressed to his cheek. Within arms reach of nine years old and she’s already the boss of him. “Hey!”  
“You look like a raccoon,” she adds, grinning. He has missed her smile.  
“Double hey!” He says indignantly, and the smile widens.  
“I’d kiss you goodbye, but…”  
“Yeah, yeah.” Bucky lunges up, grabbing her by the waist and crumpling her uniform. He presses a noisy kiss to her cheek, making her shriek, and gives her a hug. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’ve just been… tired lately.”  
“I know,” Wanda squirms out of his grip and onto the floor when Aunt Peggy calls her down. “See you after school!” she yells before clattering down the stairs. Dugan, displeased with all the commotion, hauls himself off the bed and goes in search of food.

Bucky sits up, gravity weighing as heavily on him as a sleeping cat, and takes in the pale sea green walls and the gently billowing curtains. There is the smell of salt on the breeze, the sound of waves splashing against rocks. He had always slept so well here as a child, lulled by the sound of the ocean and a sky filled with stars. He could never rest in Brooklyn, the city as loud and bright at 4am as it was at 4pm, the sodium flare of a streetlight outside his window. He had missed seeing the stars at night, and tracking the moon as it swelled from thin crescent to full and back again.  
He’s tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but Wanda’s comments stay with him. He scrubs his face with both hands, feeling where the skin of his cheeks is red and sore from the constant rubbing.  
In moving he catches a whiff of himself; he does stink. And his hair feels like play-doh, tacky and stiff enough that if he pulled it up it would probably stay there, wobbling around his head like greasy sprigs of grass.  
It’s hard not to feel like a failure.  
And it’s not just the job he’d quit over the phone while piling everything they owned into boxes, with no thought of tomorrow. Or all the friends the twins have left behind. They are resilient, they’ll make new ones, but they are still new in school, and being dropped off in the mornings by a stinking hobo is the last thing they need. They are Barnes, they are cursed enough without Bucky adding to it.

He heaves out one last sigh, throwing back the covers and climbing out of bed.  
Shower. One thing he can do is have a shower, and if he fucks that up then he can just have another shower later. Shower. Brush your teeth. Maybe, if he isn’t quite ready to crawl into the garden and decompose under the delphiniums, he’ll even try for a shave.  
Don’t think about the rest of it. Don’t think about the shattered pieces of your life. Don’t think about all the things you’ve lost and all that was never yours to lose. Don’t think about the plans you’d made and the quicksand you’d built a world on. Just think about having a damn shower. Then maybe one day, possibly before they’ve graduated college, you’ll be in a fit enough state to pick your own kids up from school.  
Bucky pulls open the door to his bedroom, and slumps down the hall to the bathroom.  
Baby steps, isn’t that what they say? One little thing at a time.  
His shoulder slides against the wall, because standing straight is for the broadly competent, and he thinks of Pietro taking his first, faltering steps across the living room floor, staggering from couch to window on chubby little legs. In a matter of weeks he’d been unstoppable, running before he was done learning how to walk, arms flailing with the joy of it all.  
Bucky can’t manage that, but if he can get cleaned up a little? Well, he’s gonna call that a win.

“Hey, Aunt Angie,” Bucky murmurs, sidling into the kitchen.  
The shower had been a little too hot, and he had stood hunched under the spray for too long before reaching for a bar of soap, sharp with the scent of lemon and rosemary. He had scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed, grey water pooling around his feet and sluicing away, before turning the mirror towards the wall and attempting to shave. He feels raw and pink without the layer of scruff, like a freshly peeled prawn. Exposed.  
“Just in time,” Angie says, picking up the full coffee pot and fetching a cup. “Take a seat.”  
“Thank you,” Bucky mumbles, sliding into the nearest chair. The old pine wood table is, as always, a clutter of cake tins and cookie jars, with Aunt Peggy’s books and bundles of dried herbs taking up whatever room is left. Pinky, a white longhair that looks more weasel than cat, is sitting on the open pages of Aunt Angie’s recipe book, and she lifts his paw up to check an ingredient before putting it down again.  
Aunt Peggy is not here. She didn’t come back from taking the kids to school, which means she must have missed the tide or had things to do in town. Otherwise Bucky wouldn’t have come downstairs.  
“This’ll pick you right up,” Angie announces, pouring him a cup of… whatever it is, it’s not coffee.  
Bucky stares at the steaming brown liquid. It’s not chicory, nor is it dandelion root. He picks it up and takes a sip. It tastes earthy and smooth, with a grassy edge that he can’t quite place.  
“Barley,” he says, taking a second swallow. What is that? It’s not walnut or wheat, it tastes almost like- “Oatstraw?”  
Angie winks, raising the pot to him in a salute. “You still got it, kid.”  
Bucky grimaces. “I’d rather have coffee.”  
“Coffee’s bad for the heart, doll.” Angie sets the pot down on the stove. “Last thing you need right now.”  
There is little Bucky can say to that, so he holds his tongue, and when the cup is empty Angie refills it, gently plying him with a slice of plain toast to line his stomach.

“You know you’re gonna have to talk to her eventually,” Angie says.  
The toast is long finished, and Bucky is at the sink, sleeves rolled up and hands immersed in soapy water. He lifts out a breakfast plate, Pietro’s from the amount of chocolate spread and jam still clinging to the glaze, and gives it a wipe.  
“No, I don’t.” Bucky hands the plate to Angie, who wipes it with a tea towel and puts it up on the dresser with the others.  
He’d missed this. Not the needling about things he should and shouldn’t do (though having someone who cared enough to needle was nice), but the soap bubbles and Angie standing beside him, waiting for the next plate. Somehow it was easier to talk about the big things when you weren’t face to face but shoulder to shoulder, and Bucky had spilled many a truth in Angie’s patient ears. Failed tests and broken promises, first kisses with girls and with boys he’d placed in her hands, and she’d given him counsel. It was not Peggy’s wisdom, blunt edged and pragmatic, but a gentler kind of courage she offered. Not better or worse, but her own.

“If you’re gonna live in the same house, you’re gonna have to talk eventually,” Angie points out. “Either that or we make a bunch of flags and start doing semaphore over the dinner table.” She takes the next plate out of Bucky’s hands before he scrubs off the pattern. “Because, young man, you will be eating dinner with us.”  
Bucky plunges his hands into the sink, in search of another plate. “I ain’t forgiving her,” he says, clipped and sullen.  
Angie waits while he washes out a bowl and passes it over. “If you’re set on hating someone, it’s gotta be the both of us,” she says softly.  
Bucky shakes his head, emphatic, and passes another bowl over. He could never hate Angie.  
“It takes two to tango, kiddo.” Angie folds the tea towel while Bucky drains the sink, the weight on his shoulders dragging him down with the suds. She places her hand on his back, a steady heat in her bird-like hands. “Feel better, eh?” she murmurs, and nudges him aside while she refills the kettle.  
Easier said than done. Bucky rubs his thumb across his newly smooth chin. “I’m gonna go check on the garden,” he says at last. “See how much damage you two have done.”  
Angie swats at him with the towel, and he slopes out the door.

*

As a boy not much younger than Pietro is now, Bucky had struggled at first on the island. No neighbourhood kids to play with, no parks to kick a ball around in, or swings or slides or anything. There were cats at least, half a dozen of them, maybe a few more. They liked being petted and curled up on his lap when he was trying to read, and were good to cuddle when he was feeling heartsick. And as much as he liked the island, there were no proper beaches to build sandcastles on, only rocks jutting out of the ocean that Becky wouldn’t come and explore with him, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t go clambering over them on his own. He’d get into trouble.  
But the manor house was huge and welcoming, and had rooms to explore and books to read. And there was the garden.  
Back in New York they had lived in a cramped apartment, in a big block with a bunch of other apartments. The only garden Bucky had was the one of old yoghurt pots and dirt scooped up from the street that he kept on his windowsill. The flowers he managed to germinate grew spindly and frail, with not enough life to let them thrive.  
In New York Becky and Bucky had shared the same pokey little bedroom. When they came to the island he got his own room with walls he could decorate any way he wanted, and when he missed Becky he could knock on the wall, because her room was on the other side of it. They would spend half the night tapping out secret messages, and no one told them to stop or be quiet or behave. Aunt Peggy had even given them a book about morse code, and they’d figured out a way to do long taps by scratching on the wall instead.  
Most of all, he loved the garden.

Despite being surrounded by the Atlantic, plant life thrives on the island. The high rocks shelter the soil from much of the sea spray, as does the abundance of black walnut, oak and pine trees. A resourceful ancestor had planted an orchard not too far from the house, where apple and cherry and mulberries grow, providing food for the winter months and wood for crafting. Bucky had added to the orchard himself over time, planting hazelnut and pear and peach grown from seed. The conservatory had been his idea too, and the greenhouse, but that had come later. Before the trees and the floral borders and the terracotta pots stacked up in the shed were the vegetables.  
To a child there is no greater proof of magic than the act of sowing a seed. That a corky little fragment of beetroot or a dried kernel of corn, when pushed into the ground, springs up into a whole new plant. Only Jack himself, standing in the shadow of his giant beanstalk, could have felt how Bucky did, watching as dirt transformed into a lush jungle as the weeks slipped into months.  
After that first, feral summer his enthusiasm swelled like the bright orange pumpkins that he grew on trailing vines. He ordered seed catalogues from the back pages of his Aunt’s magazines, scouring the dense books of blotchy printed text that came through the mail. He divined the secret language of tomatoes - the determinate and the indeterminate - while Aunt Peggy leaned over his shoulder, whispering the secrets of quarters and cross-quarters and the waxing of the moon.

Radishes were pulled from the ground first - tender little gems that tasted of crunch and fire that Peggy sliced and buttered. Peas came next, sweet and begging to be eaten straight from the pod, and carrots pulled from the earth like buried treasure. Between the rows Peggy planted chives to keep the carrot flies away and marigolds to feed the bees, drowsy and smooth-bodied creatures that lived in the hives under the orchard.  
The childish desire to grow the biggest pumpkin, the longest carrot, the fattest beetroot, gave way to growing the tastiest, the best for winter storage, and when it came to pumpkins the strangest shapes. In between the rows of chard and beet and a rainbow of carrots were flowers.  
Bucky came late to growing flowers, it had always seemed Aunt Angie’s domain. The front garden leading up to the door was her world, tall spires of foxgloves and delphiniums and larkspur in gentle shades of pink and blue leading to a profusion of lavender. She didn’t grow them for spells, or to ward off negative energies from the house. She grew them for her wife, a taste of an England that Peggy had left for love.

When Bucky looks over the garden now he can see it as it was, like the afterimage from staring at the sun for too long. Peggy has taken care of the vegetable gardens and flower borders, though it is too early in the season for much to be growing. There are tulips flowering in the orchard, and pale blossoms on the trees.  
Bucky wanders over to the potting shed, the door a little stiff and needing a push to get it open. All his pots and trays and cloches are where he had left them, gathering dust and spiders webs. The seeds left on the shelf are old, and he doubts that they will germinate. He runs his fingers along the counter, the woodgrain as familiar as the lines on the palm of his hand.  
It wouldn’t take much. He can order seeds online, now. He’d still need to drive to the mainland to pick them up, as no mailman ever set foot on the island. Maybe pick up a few bits and pieces while he was over there. Until then there is plenty to keep him busy, and he grabs a garden fork before heading out again.

Bucky has no idea how much time has passed until Pietro comes racing into the garden, one of the younger cats Bucky hasn’t caught the name of keeping pace with him.  
“Dad!” he yells, slamming into Bucky’s side and knocking him into the dirt.  
“Oof!” Bucky rights himself, one hand planted in the dirt and the other wrapping around his son, getting smudges on his uniform that will be hell to scrub out later. “How was school?”  
Pietro ignores the question, grabbing Bucky by the hands and hauling him to his feet, joints popping. He starts chattering about something or other in that rattling freight train chug of excitement that Bucky can barely keep up with, only knows not to say yes to anything until he has half an idea what’s going on.  
They walk back to the house, Bucky kicking the worst of the mud off his shoes before crossing the lawn, and finds Wanda sitting on the grass with her homework. Pietro goes running off in search of trouble while Bucky sprawls on the grass beside her, back aching from a day of digging and weeding. It’s a good kind of ache, one of muscles well-used and hard earned sweat. Wanda pokes him with the end of her pen.  
“I thought you were going to get cleaned up today,” she says, eyes on her work.  
“I did,” Bucky replies, looking up at the blue sky.  
“You’re filthy.” Wanda picks a twig out of his hair, and prods his cheek with it.  
“I am,” Bucky agrees, flinching away as she pokes at him again, the brittle stem snapping.  
Wanda tries to look unimpressed, and Bucky rests his head on her ankle, listening to the faint scratch of pen on paper as she fills in the page of her workbook.

Bucky rolls onto his front and stares at Wanda until she deigns to look at him. “What?”  
“Can I borrow a pen?” he asks. He needs to write a letter, and now under the warm sun seems as good a time as any.  
Wanda rummages in her school bag for her pencil case, selecting the most frothy pink pen she owns. It’s shaped like a flamingo, with tufty little pink feathers and a long, curved neck. She hands it over, the rubbery neck making the head bob from side to side. “Here.”  
“Oh.” Bucky takes the pen, the head weebling violently. “And in my colour, thank you.”  
Wanda smiles, a small, wonderful thing to see, like the first flowers of spring. Bucky watches as she turns back to her work, feeling another lurch of guilt. It should have been him taking her to school in the mornings. It should have been him packing her lunch and-  
Wanda taps him on the nose with her pen, a sturdy red plastic one not shaped like a bird. “Stop that,” she says crisply.  
“Stop what?” Bucky rubs his nose.  
“That,” Wanda goes for him with the pen again, and Bucky lets himself be poked lightly on the nose.

Bucky has already apologised to her, and still needs to pin down Pietro and talk to him about things too. There’s a lot he needs to do, and he’s already exhausted thinking about it.  
“I need a job,” Bucky mutters, almost to himself.  
Wanda doesn’t look up from her homework. “Well, what are you good at?”  
Bucky blows out a puff of air, catching the loose strands of hair falling over his face. “I don’t know. Piggyback rides? Making french toast?”  
Wanda hums, considering his pitiably short list and finding no fault with it. “You could make French toast for a living, but you’re not allowed to give anyone piggyback rides but me.”  
“And Pietro.”  
Wanda rolls her eyes. “Fine. And Pietro.”  
“Well then, it’s settled.” Bucky rolls onto his back. “I’ll be a wandering French toast merchant. I’ll travel the streets with my trusty camping stove and loaf of bread, frying up - hey! Quit poking me!”  
Wanda prods him again. “You’re silly, Daddy.”  
“Very,” Bucky agrees.  
“You should ask Aunt Peggy,” she adds. “She’s clever.”

Bucky glances up at the house. There is no one at the window, but he could swear that someone was watching them.  
“Maybe later,” he says slowly, before making the flamingo pen peck Wanda’s ear. “Can I have some paper?”  
Wanda digs a notebook out of her bag. “What do you need it for?” she asks, handing it over.  
“I gotta write to your Aunt Becca,” Bucky tells her. Wanda immediately loses interest in her homework.  
“Can I write her a letter too?”  
Bucky nods. “Sure thing, you can write to your Aunt any time you want, you know that right?” Wanda looks disapprovingly at her father for stating the obvious.  
“And Pietro,” she adds.  
Bucky smiles, and it should be harder, his muscles should be atrophied from lack of use, but Wanda’s excitement is infectious. “And Pietro, but he needs to use his own pen.” He gives her a mock-defiant look. “I’m not sharing.”  
Wanda calls him silly, and goes racing off to find her brother. Bucky turns to a fresh page in the notebook, past the drawings of sunflowers and ladybugs and gossamer-winged fairies.

_Dear Becs_  
_You can say ‘I told you so’, okay? I don’t much want to hear it, but you can say it._  
_I’m back with the Aunts, and I swear it’s like nothing has changed. They’re a little older and greyer (please don’t tell Aunt Angie I said that) but that’s it. It’s still chocolate cake for breakfast and the ocean stretching on forever. You remember when we’d walk out onto the rocks and stretch out our arms? Imagine that we were birds and the wind could carry us away? It’s still the same, still that sense like on the edge of a dream, that all you need to do is tilt yourself forward at just the right angle, catch the wind under your fingers, and you would take off._  


Bucky rubs his cheek, leaving a faint smear of ink.  


_The kids love it here. They loved Brooklyn but here they can run a little wild and be safe.  
That’s all I care about, not flying away like a leaf on the breeze. I just want them to be safe. Happy. Just give me that and I can sleep at night._

Bucky hears the sound of feet on the grass, and signs his name at the bottom of the page, tossing the pen and paper aside. He makes it just in time before Pietro tackles him, rolling them both around on the grass until Aunt Angie calls them in to dinner.


	2. Arnica

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _His eyes will be blue and green_

Becca knew something was up before the Aunts did, which was a rarity in the house. Bucky could feel her discomfort needling away in the back of his thoughts. An insistent tugging on his sleeve to _come home._

The name Becca was still new, a way of separating herself from her childhood, she claimed. Sigourney Weaver did it, Becca said, she had been born Susan, and she chose a better name, an adult one. She was a _woman_ now, and women didn’t have names like Becky.   
Bucky was pretty sure that there were plenty of women called Becky, and it was really a way of distancing herself from her brother. For as long as he could remember they had been Bucky and Becky. Hell, that had been how he’d gotten landed with a nickname like Bucky in the first place. Bicky wasn’t gonna happen and Bocky… well that just sounded like a chicken. But now Becky was Becca and James didn’t really fit him anymore, so he figured he would always be Bucky.   
Becky did her homework and wore her hair in pigtails. Becca wore heels and make up, learning the mysteries of eyeliner and lipgloss from magazines, and after a few stern words about going through other people’s makeup bags in search of nail polish, from Aunt Peggy.   
Bucky liked to sit and watch Becca in the bathroom. He would perch awkwardly, all elbows and knees, on the edge of the bath while she carefully applied a sharpened pencil to her eye or dragged a tube of colour across her lips. Blood red was always Aunt Peggy’s colour, which left Becca the rest of the rainbow.  
Then he had fretted the whole time she’d gone out on her first date, and would have stalked after her around the mainland if Aunt Peggy hadn’t set him to work in the new conservatory. She had been radiant when she came home, almost incandescent, and Bucky realised what Aunt Angie had meant about different kinds of magics.

Bucky ignores the ghost of Becca’s hand at his shoulder, the whisper of her voice in his ear, for as long as he can stand. He slouches along the causeway, the narrow road that links the island to the mainland for a few hours twice a day damp from sea spray. He has been caught idling by the ocean before, the tide coming in around him and lapping onto the stone road, waves crashing around him as he splashed and waded back to the island, and run through the front door in shoes soaked in seawater. They dried stiff and crusted with minerals, and Aunt Angie had declared that bad luck would never follow him in saltwater shoes.  
Maybe that’s why he finds himself dragging his feet. Saltwater is a cure for everything, so the Aunts say.  
It sounds idyllic, an island cut off from the mainland but for these brief moments, but it isn’t. The sea is not mirror smooth and warm, but a restless thrashing of foam and waves, the swells cresting at shoulder height on their journey to the shore. Sometimes he lingers to watch their rise and fall, feeling the same pull of the moon that rushes through his veins sending the waves crashing onto the rocks.   
Sometimes his heart felt so light it seemed that he could open his arms and let it float away like a balloon, stretched taut and buffeted by the winds, but now it is an anchor, dragging on the road behind him. With every step he scrapes the toe of his shoe along the road, slowly wearing through the leather, and every drop of blood soaks into the gravel road, waiting to be carried away by the sea.  
Aunt Peggy said that blood magic was the most powerful of all, and a person could do anything if they were willing to spill enough blood on the right stone. Aunt Angie warned against it, guiding the twins towards the gentler energies of plants and stones, but then she hadn’t lost her brother to the Barnes curse.

He barely has to reach for the front door before it flies open, Becca launching herself down the steps and into his arms. The impact judders his already aching ribs, and Bucky stumbles back a few paces, half disappearing into the spires of delphiniums and foxgloves lining the path.   
Aunt Angie is next down the steps, while Peggy stands guard in the doorway. Angie makes no attempts to prise Becca off Bucky, but pushes back a strand of his hair, damp with sea-spray and hanging over his eye, and surveys the damage.  
“A little rosemary and an ice pack will fix that right up,” she says gently. “And a slice of chocolate cake, I think.”  
Bucky manages a weak little smile, splitting the scab that had formed under his eye and causing a fresh spill of blood. Becca lets out a distraught little sob, reaching up to blot the flow with the cuff of her shirt. It’s already smeared with his blood at the shoulder, so what difference does a little more make.  
“Come on,” Angie says firmly, shepherding them back to the house. “In we go.”  
Peggy steps back, allowing them into the house, but her gaze never wavers, focused on the mainland as if she could send a bolt of lightning down on whoever raised a hand to her nephew.

Bucky allows himself to be ushered into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The first bite of chocolate cake that he’s given sits on his tongue like damp sand, but he swallows it, giving Becca a weak little smile as she nudges the plate towards him. It makes her happy to eat it, so he does, the buttercream a thick paste in his mouth, nothing more than grease and powdered sugar and the bitterness of cocoa.  
“That’s enough now, Becca dear,” Aunt Angie murmurs, bringing over a heavy mason bowl of warm water, a few sprigs of rosemary leaves floating on the surface. “Go fetch me the medicine chest.”  
Becca scrambles to her feet, rushing off to the bathroom for the wooden case filled with vials of oils and jars of ointments kept under the sink.  
“She means well,” Angie says, dipping a cloth into the astringent water. “Our little bird.”  
Becca is a little bird, delicate and bright, flitting from one thing to the next and never stopping long.  
“Yeah, I know.” Bucky sighs, and lets Angie lift his chin with a delicate hand, flinching as she drags the damp cloth under his eye.  
“And little birds need a place to roost.” Angie rinses out the cloth, staining the water pink. “That’s how they fly so far, having a place to come back to.”  
Bucky doesn’t answer, staring up at the ceiling as fresh blood spills down his cheek.

Becca comes back into the kitchen, bringing the case and Aunt Peggy with her. She hefts it up onto the table while Peggy clears a space, and Angie wriggles her fingers thoughtfully before cracking open the lid.  
Bucky has always been fascinated by that case, by the neat little rows of salves and ointments hidden in the base, and the narrow bottles and vials tucked neatly in the upper section. With a deft tug the entire box opens out like an accordion, revealing sections folded up on clever little hinges. Some of the jars are Bucky’s own, made under Angie's watchful eye, on evenings and weekends not taken up with school work. It is one of his that she picks up.  
“This should sort you right out,” she says brightly, unscrewing the cap and dabbing her finger into the pale salve.  
“Who was it?” Peggy asks abruptly as Angie smears the mixture on Bucky’s skin.  
“No one,” Bucky sighs.  
Becca huddles closer to him. “Was it Hodge? I swear if it was I’ll-”  
Bucky wishes for a second that everyone could just go away and leave him in peace, or he could be somewhere far away from other people, just until he caught his breath again. Somewhere like the bottom of the ocean, or maybe the moon.  
“It was Joe,” he says, steeling himself for what comes next.  
“Who’s Joe?” Angie whispers loudly to Peggy, who shakes her head grimly. Becca stares at Bucky, despite his best attempts to hide behind his damp hair.  
“I’m gonna kill him,” Becca announces, and Bucky is on his feet before anyone can stop him.  
“No you’re not!” He snaps. Seeing Becca wince is enough to make his already aching heart sting, and he shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Becs. I shouldn’t have yelled.”  
Angie puts her hands on Bucky’s shoulders, gently pushing him back down onto his chair. Once she’s certain he isn’t going to run off she gets on with applying salve to his cheek.  
“Who’s Joe?” Peggy asks, much more loudly than Angie did, and Becca speaks before Bucky has the chance to.  
“A boy in class Bucky likes.”

Bucky has made no secret of his interest in both boys and girls, and while the Aunts and his sister supported his choices, that didn’t mean the rest of the world was okay with it.  
“Hang on, I thought you were seeing… what was her name? Dorothy?”  
“Dolores.” Peggy corrects her, her attention still on Bucky.  
“Oh yes,” Angie says, scooping out a little more salve. “You called her Dot.”  
“Yeah, well. We broke up.” Bucky has no interest in going into detail there.  
“So you asked out this boy Joe.” Peggy is relentless. “And he did this?”  
Bucky hunches forward, trying to make himself smaller, trying to slink out of the whole damn conversation. Maybe if he wishes really hard he can teleport to somewhere far away, in the coldest reaches of space. The moon wouldn’t be so bad, and he would freeze before he suffocated.  
“James Buchanan Barnes.” There is a command in Peggy’s tone, and Bucky could no more ignore it than he could change the colour of his eyes.  
“Yes,” he says, clipped and sullen. “I asked him out Friday and he punched me.”  
Angie puts the cap on the jar of salve and packs it away before laying her hands gently on top of Bucky’s head.  
“Sweetheart,” she says softly, her words slipping through all of Bucky’s defences. “Perhaps you might want to set your heart on someone more that way inclined?”  
“He is that way inclined,” Bucky scowls. He’d seen Joe out with another boy from their year. Heard him talking up a storm about Da Vinci being gay in art class. “He got mad at me because I’ve dated girls.”   
He’d called Bucky a fake. Told him to pick a side. Said he wouldn’t suck a dick that smelt of fish.  
Bucky slips out of Angie’s hold and gets to his feet. “I gotta go get some air,” he mutters, and is out the door before they can stop him.

There’s nowhere he can go, not with the tide rolling in and the road to the mainland submerged. Barnes Island is only a couple of miles across, so it doesn’t take long for Aunt Peggy to find him, staring out to sea like when he used to look for whales. But there are no whales here, he would have seen one by now. The waves crash against the rocks, spray soaking into his clothes.  
“Aren’t you wet enough?” Peggy asks with a barely repressed smile.  
Bucky draws his shoulders up, huddling in the upturned collar of his jacket as she picks her way across the rocks, sure-footed in her heels. She sits down beside him, crossing her legs at the knee, and looks out to sea. She is stubborn enough to put a goat to shame, and Bucky knows from experience that she can outwait the longest sulking fit, sitting patiently as the sun sets and the stars prick out one by one, though Bucky is much too old to be carried home to bed when he falls asleep now.  
“Mama said that the Barnes are cursed,” he says, voice muffled by his jacket. “Is that true?”  
Peggy would never lie to him, not like Angie would, trying to shield him from a bitter truth.  
“Yes, my darling.”  
“Anyone who falls in love with us will die.”  
“Yes.” She reaches out to stroke his hair, pushing the damp strands out of his eyes.  
“Like Uncle Michael.”

Peggy pauses, the name still carrying a sting, and continues to comb through his hair with red-painted nails.  
“My brother was in love,” she says slowly. “He thought he could defeat the curse.” She pauses, and in that silence Bucky can feel the press of words, more than he can stand to hear. Even unspoken they weigh on him like silver chains, bright and beautiful as they wrap around his heart. “But he knew the risk. He was a great witch, your uncle. The greatest I have ever known. He made his choice, and we must respect that.”  
“You’re not mad at him?” Bucky asks abruptly.   
She brushes her thumb along Bucky’s cheek, the sharp nail gentle against the bruises. “Oh, I am furious, but it doesn’t do to dwell on such things.” She smiles, wide and bitter-bright. “Come on, my little sea-witch, let’s go home and do some spells.”  
Something crystalizes in Bucky’s chest, as though all the saltwater had permeated his skin. As though a crust of minerals had formed around his heart, the way it had on his shoes.  
He leans into Peggy’s hand, nodding his head. Maybe she will let him look through the old grimoire, the one of old magics and pins and knotted rope. He will work a spell, a special one, maybe the last spell he will ever need.

~⛤~

Bucky pulls the pickup alongside the kerb, the tyres kissing the sidewalk, and lets the engine idle.  
Wanda is hunched up on the passenger seat, knees under her chin and heels tucked onto the edge of her seat, her phone pressed almost up to her nose.  
“C’mon, little witch,” Bucky says, twisting around in her seat to check that Pietro, pinging around in the back, has got all his bags. “Candy Crush can wait.”  
“Daaad.” Wanda rolls her eyes. “No one plays Candy Crush anymore.”  
Bucky puffs out an exasperated breath of air. “Fine, Angry Birds then. Time for school.”  
She gives him a sideways look, and he catches a glimpse of a glossy cartoon dragon on her screen. “Dad, you’re so old.”  
Bucky misses being called Daddy, and not in the creepy way that the internet is so freaking fond of and half the reason he stays off social media. Being called Daddy meant there wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be resolved with a slice of chocolate cake and a cuddle. And maybe a few stern words in another parent’s ear. Bucky was tall enough and broad enough to come across as intimidating if he had to, but it was really the threat of the Aunts that had people shaking in their boots. Being called Dad meant parent-teacher meetings and homework and - looming on the horizon like the iceberg in Titanic - SAT’s.  
Bucky shudders at the thought.

“All systems are go!” Pietro calls out behind Bucky. The rear door cracks open and Pietro tumbles out onto the sidewalk, his silver hair almost blinding and a comic book clamped between his teeth. Bucky snaps to attention.  
“Come straight home tonight, Spaceman!” He yells after his son. “No sleepovers or after school shenanigans, you hear.”  
Pietro whines, his mouth too full of comic to argue, while Wanda finally pockets her phone, giving Bucky a look for using the word ‘shenanigans’. He pokes out his tongue at her, if she’s gonna call him old then he’ll damn well act it.  
Pietro spits out his comic. “But Dad, I was gonna-”   
“It can wait,” Bucky cuts him off. “There’s a… something in retrograde or-” He shakes his head. “- I don’t know, Mercury or something, you know this stuff better than me. I only do plants and free taxi services.”  
Pietro offers a token grumble, but his heart isn’t in it. Bucky taps his cheek and Wanda leans over, giving him a quick kiss before climbing out of the car with far more grace than her brother. They walk across to school side by side, and Bucky feels a fresh rush of affection for them both. It’s still unshakably weird to think of them moving to High School next year, where they’ll look like sprightly little weeds surrounded by gangly, towering teenagers.  
Bucky huffs, putting the truck into gear and checking his rear view mirror before pulling out onto the street. If any one of those gangly, towering high school kids goes anywhere near the twins he’ll kick their asses. Or let Wanda hex them, there’s a bunch of spells in the family grimoire the girl is just itching to try.  
He taps on the brakes, a few seconds before a kid dashes out onto the road in front of him. He nods at them to keep moving when they give him the panicked, rabbit in the headlights stare of a kid who’s just figured out who he is, and when the coast is clear heads into town.

The storefront is painted a pleasant shade of sunny yellow, a colour Wanda had chosen after much deliberation, Barnes inscribed in a neat, curling font above the door. Through the large windows prospective customers can see a profusion of green, and shelves stacked with pots and hangers between displays of carved candles, but Bucky doesn’t see any of that, taking the truck around back to the service entrance. He pulls up outside the back door and turns off the engine, taking a few seconds to run through his spiralling list of tasks for the day.  
Not enough hours to get it all done, so he’ll do what he can and put the rest off tomorrow, same as always. There’s still things on his to-do list from when he first came back to the island.  
Bucky frowns. Has it been four years now? Five? Six?  
Someone hammers on his window, making him shriek, hands lurching up in a counter-hex.  
“Hey boss!” An irrepressibly cheerful voice comes filtering through the vent, and a round, smiling face presses up against the window. “You want some coffee?”  
Bucky lowers his hands, and gives the _brujo_ at the window a nod. “Hey, Luis.”  
Luis holds up a mug of coffee, and steps back far enough for Bucky to crack open the door and climb out.  
“Thank you,” Bucky snags the coffee and takes a deep gulp. There’s not a person on earth who makes better coffee than Luis, fuck knows how he does it.

Every book Bucky has read about Brujeria tells of dark, potent magic. Vodou, Santeria, the kind of things that Bucky, a dirt grubbing hedge witch, skitters away from. But Luis has a soul like sunlight, radiating joy and enthusiasm, so Bucky figures whoever wrote all those books didn’t know shit.  
While Bucky communes with his coffee Luis starts unloading the pickup, chattering away about the morning so far. He stops mid-sentence, pulling something out of his back pocket; a bundle of something that smells strongly of moss and withered roots, tied up in a floral print square of cloth.  
“Oh yeah, and before I forget here you go.” He tosses it at Bucky, who catches it one-handed and gives the bundle a dubious sniff.  
“What is this, a grigri?”  
Luis shrugs. “It’ll keep you safe.”  
For once, he has nothing more to say, and picks up a tray of potted herbs to take into the store.  
Bucky rolls the bundle around in his hand thoughtfully, absently identifying the flowers printed on the cotton. Whatever is going on, he trusts Luis, and hangs it from the rear view mirror alongside the little skeleton Luis brought him back from Guadalajara. The skeleton jangles and clatters, tiny pieces of wood threaded together and painted white, with a little basket and yellow straw hat.  
Bucky lifts a tray of miniature roses out of the pickup, tiny buds of red and white waiting to open, and follows Luis inside.

Bucky is grateful to have Luis. Okay, so the guy never stops talking, but he’s happy to open up in the morning while Bucky is taking the kids to school and close up after he’s picked them up and taken the home. He doesn’t complain about the erratic hours Bucky keeps, knowing that missing the tide means several hours of being stranded.   
The island has a jetty on the west side from the days before cars when the Barnes rowed over to the mainland, and now and then Bucky debates getting a little boat or something and being able to go ashore whenever he damn well pleases. But knowing his luck he would only end up being swept out to sea and eaten by a whale or something.  
“Dude,” Luis says loudly. “_Dude_!”  
Bucky’s head snaps up. He’d been so lost in thought that he’d lost track of what Luis was saying. “Uh. Sorry.” Bucky rubs his eyes. Why does he feel so out of sorts? “You were saying?”  
Luis looks unimpressed. As much as Luis can. “See, now this is why you gotta keep up with what’s going on in the firmament, bro. The movement of the moon into all these houses is like a great big ‘yo dude’ from the universe, and you ain’t listening.”  
“The moon doesn’t care what I do,” Bucky huffs. He’s had this talk with Peggy too many times. “It’s arrogant to suggest otherwise.”  
“Butterflies and hurricanes, my man,” Luis swings around in a half circle, making the tray of herbs in his arms sway and dance. “Actions have consequences. Call it the laws of thermodynamics an’ so on. Ain’t that the moon is picking on you personally, it’s just like when there’s a hurricane way out in the ocean, an’ a week later your fence blows over.” He swings back to face Bucky, and the herbs swing with him.   
“Yeah, yeah.” Bucky scrubs at his cheek, and realises he forgot to shave this morning. “Anyway, what were you saying?”  
Luis lets the debate about the heavens influencing the earth go for now. “I was gonna put the roses out front, make a little display?” He bounces on his toes. “Maybe put a few of my candles out there with them?”  
Luis makes candles. Scented candles, jarred candles, pillar candles, any kind you can think of. Pale seafoam green wax in sea shells and votives rolled in crushed herbs, he makes them in the back room, bringing in all manner of flotsam from the beach and floral teacups from goodwill to fill, the kinds of things that are insanely popular. But his favourites are candles dipped in different coloured waxes and carved into to reveal their hidden rainbows of colours.  
“That sounds great,” Bucky assures him, and while Luis gets to work he heads out back in search of more coffee.

Barnes is not a Witchcraft shop. It’s not one of those dimly lit, cluttered places they have in New York, staffed by surly twentysomethings who call themselves goth but have no idea who Robert Smith is.  
Inside it is airy and bright, the sunflower walls hung with pieces by local artists between the shelves of candles and scented oils. Houseplants and herbs rub shoulders with ornaments and locally-made sculptures, while tucked in a far corner is a large bookshelf of incense and oils. There are stick incenses and little wooden burners, and cone incense with pottery censers shaped like little cottages or fat, pugnacious dragons, tendrils of smoke curling out of chimneys and snouts. On higher shelves are rolls of charcoal discs and decorative brass censers, and jars filled with Bucky’s personal incense blends, which when brought to the counter are weighed into glass jars or paper bags, depending on how much you need or how much you can spend.  
Out on the street there are trestle tables in front of the large windows that Luis covers with potted herbs and flowers, arranged by whim and arcane methods that Bucky doesn’t try to comprehend. One day it will be cooking herbs and little terracotta pots of edible flowers, another day a profusion of ivy and jarred candles.  
It’s not a Witchcraft shop. Most of the people who come by are not witches. But maybe they need something, a little push, a little persuasion. A sweet fragrance to burn when Mother-in-law visits, that makes the day pass a little easier. Something pretty for the mantlepiece that makes a heavy heart a little lighter. A pot of herbs for the kitchen that add more than just savour to meals. Quiet, gentle magics, barely noticed despite their strength.  
The shop does okay, enough to pay the bills and their wages. Bucky wishes he could give Luis more, but whenever the subject comes up Luis shakes him off, and Bucky ends up listening to a monologue on Neo-cubism or whatever has inspired his candle carving of late. Or Luis ignores him and turns up the radio behind the counter.  
So long as he is happy Bucky will let it go, and leaves him to dance around the shop floor to Calexico.

The day passes quickly, with Bucky spending the morning in the back room catching up on the sisyphean pile of paperwork while Luis mans the store. For all Luis’ many and varied skills, accounts are not one of them. Like most self-employed people, Bucky has a fairly simple tier system for paperwork; about to be overdue, so overdue that it’s about to incur a fee, and not overdue yet. He’s heard rumours of people who file their taxes well before the deadline and keep their accounts in good order, but he doubts that they’re true.  
“Hey, boss?” Luis taps on the door frame, whole body angled away from the door as if accounting was a black hole that could pull him into its event horizon if he got too close.  
Bucky squints at the computer screen, the columns drifting in and out of focus, and wonders if it’s from being tired, or if he’s so old he needs glasses. “Yeah?”  
“I’m gonna go for lunch.” Luis points his thumb at the door. “Meeting my cousin, remember? You want me to bring you back something? Maybe some tostones?”  
Bucky blinks a couple more times, but the numbers refuse to resolve. “Yeah. Thanks.” He shuts down the computer and turns to face Luis. “Be back by 3?”  
“You got it.” Luis gives him a thumbs up. “There’s a lady coming by this afternoon to collect that elephant thing, and there’s a bagel in the kitchen.” Luis gives him a mock-stern look. “If I come back and find that it’s still there I will be very sad.”  
Bucky nods, giving him a fond smile. “Thank you, Luis.”  
Luis kisses his fingers and gestures in the air between them. “Just so you know there’s gonna be cocktails. I will be feeling very affectionate when I get back.”  
“Noted,” Bucky hauls himself to his feet. “Hyperverbal and clingy.”  
“You know me so well, bro!” Luis shouts over his shoulder, and with a jangle of the bell over the door he is gone.

Bucky potters about in the shop while Luis is out, checking what’s low in stock and sending a few emails to suppliers. At lunchtime he sits on the edge of the counter and eats his bagel while leafing through a seed catalogue, getting crumbs over the photos of zinnias and cosmos. The elephant-thing sits on the counter beside him, a large piece of driftwood carved into something that, from the right angle with your eyes screwed up does look like an elephant, trunk raised high. Luis says it’s good luck so long as it faces the window, and who is Bucky to argue with that logic.  
Afternoons tend to be quiet in the store, and Bucky finds himself kicking his heels. He has more paperwork to do, but it’s involved and requires his full concentration. If someone were to come in he’d lose his place and have to start over.   
He makes himself a fresh pot of coffee, the same beans and water that Luis uses but still nowhere near as good, and sits down with a notebook. He owes Becs a letter, and in an empty store his mind is wandering off down roads best left untravelled, so he writes it all down and slips it into an envelope, checking his phone for her current address. He can mail it on the way to picking up the kids, and in a month or two maybe get a postcard from wherever she is these days.

By the time Luis gets back, reeking of coconut and spilling joy like gold coins, the elephant has been collected and Bucky has rearranged the incense shelves twice before putting it back the way it was to start with. True to his word, Luis brings him a takeaway carton of fried tostones smothered in salsa and onion. Bucky sits on the end of the counter, sucking sour cream off his fingers, and listens as Luis regales him with his cousin’s latest adventures. With every bite Bucky’s mood improves, until he can hardly remember what had him so down.  
Tostones finished, he washes his hands in the kitchen and packs up, before coming back into the shop.  
“How about we close up early?” Bucky suggests. It’s been a quiet day and what the Aunts said this morning about Mercury has him a little on edge.   
Luis claps his hands together and turns up the radio, salsaing across the shopfloor to start bringing in the flowers from outside. Bucky doesn’t get out of the way fast enough while cashing up the till and gets tangoed around a couple of times before Luis lets him go with a flourish, clicking his heels on the waxed floorboards and clapping his hands in time to the music.  
He’s still shimmying along when Bucky guides him to the back door, locking up behind them because wards are good but padlocks are better.  
“See you tomorrow,” Bucky shouts as Luis dances down the street.  
“Hasta mañana!” comes drifting back as Bucky climbs into the truck and turns on the engine. He checks his rear view mirror and pulls out, heading to the school to pick up the twins.

Bucky still isn’t sure what strings the Aunts pulled to get the twins enrolled, or what leverage they have to make the Headmistress so tolerant of their hours. The causeway is generally accessible around school hours, though it usually means the twins spend an hour getting underfoot in the store before or after school. Sometimes they come in a little later, and if there’s a storm they don’t come in at all.   
Pietro can’t abide being stuck in the store, and has already started making noises about learning to sail, though in his mind it’s more like a three masted pirate ship than a motor boat.  
Today they drive back to the island while waves are still sloshing over the causeway, though the outgoing tide is less dramatic about these things. Wanda sticks her head out of the window, checking the road for any landed fish in need of rescuing, the wheels sending water spraying in diffuse arcs that trap brief glimpses of rainbows.  
Once home the twins scatter, Pietro clattering up the stairs to his attic room and telescope while Wanda takes herself off to the kitchen to conspire with the Aunts. Bucky debates kicking off his boots and making his acquaintance with the couch, but at the last minute turns around and heads into the garden.   
Jonesy, the sleek black tomcat, comes prowling alongside him, tiptoeing daintily along the footpath. Bucky bends down to scratch his head, already making a list of things to do. The spring peas need supporting with twiggy branches that he still hasn’t pruned from the fruit trees, and he needs to sow cucumbers soon if Aunt Angie is going to have enough for her bread and butter pickles. No shortage of things to do, but getting dirt under his fingers has a way of quieting an unsteady heart. Even his.

*

The pain is sharp and sudden and lodged right under his ribs.  
Bucky jolts a little, knocking his dinner plate forward a few inches, and rubs at the ache in his chest.  
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” Aunt Angie asks, straightening his water glass before it falls over.  
Bucky doesn’t answer, not for a few minutes at least, sitting back in his chair and frowning. One of the cats slinks out from under the table, where Wanda has been sneaking him bites of chicken, and climbs onto Bucky’s lap, purring loudly. Bucky strokes his fur absently, the sensation in his chest becoming sharper, more focused. A stinging sensation blossoms on his right cheek, making bright sparks flare up behind his eyes.  
“Fuck,” Bucky hisses, hand flying up to cradle his jaw. He knows this. He knows what he’s feeling, fear and anger roiling in his gut.  
“Bucky?” Peggy asks sharply, pulling his thoughts into focus. He looks up at her, Angie already on her feet and clearing a space on the table. “Bucky, what is it?”  
“Becs,” he whispers, his heart kicking.  
The twins stare at their dad, and Pietro is the first to reach for his phone, tapping rapidly at the screen.  
“Where is she now?” Peggy asks, and Bucky can’t answer, his heart is pounding in his ears, his breath rasping his throat dry.  
“The last postcard was from Rockville,” Wanda answers for him, and Angie goes off in search of a map. “Daddy?”  
The cat in Bucky’s lap yowls softly, nudging at the tears spilling down his cheeks with a rough pink tongue. He swipes at his nose with the back of his wrist, blinking the tears away. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” he tells Wanda. _They’re not my tears_. “I’m okay.”

Angie slams the road atlas on the table, flicking through the pages until she finds what she needs. “Wanda, darling? Can I borrow that ring your Aunt Becca sent you?”  
The ring is a cheap piece of hematite, but it’s not the cost that matters. Wanda slips it off her thumb and hands it over, and Peggy snags a hair off Bucky’s head. While Angie holds the ring steady Peggy attaches the hair, making an impromptu pendulum for dowsing.  
Bucky lifts the cat off his lap and sets him on the floor, wiping at his eyes as he goes to the back door for his shoes and jacket. He stops, one foot halfway into his boot. _The tide_.  
“You gotta go now, Dad!” Pietro comes running after him, holding up his phone. Low tide has long passed, and the sea will be washing over the road. Bucky walks up to his son and grasps the back of his head, kissing him hard on his silver-sprayed hair.  
“I’ll be back soon,” he whispers. “You hold down the fort, Mission Control.”  
“Affirmative,” Pietro mumbles into his shirt, stepping back when Peggy brings out the pendulum and map.  
“Thanks, Peggy.” Bucky slips the ring into his pocket. “Can you-”  
“We’ll get the kids to school,” Peggy finishes. “Go on. Bring her home.”  
He gives her a last, grateful nod, and heads out the door.

The tide is coming in fast as he drives out to the mainland, breakers crashing against the rocks and buffeting the side of the pickup. Bucky grips the steering wheel, keeping the truck straight as he tries to sight the road ahead, spray lashing at the windshield as the wipers sweep back and forth. His every instinct screams to put his foot down on the pedal, get to dry land before he is swept away. But he holds steady, counting to the fourth wave and navigating through the wash it leaves in its wake.  
At last the wheels hit dry land and he guns the engine, the wheels spinning for a second before catching on concrete, and he turns the truck south.   
Rockville. He had written the address on an envelope a few hours ago, and he’ll be there before the letter will. Four hours, maybe five and he’ll be there. 

*

“Becs?” Bucky hammers on the apartment door, and when no one answers kicks it for good measure.  
The place is not exactly squalid, but there is an energy to it that sets Bucky’s teeth on edge, from the confederate flag on the muscle car parked out front to the blare of thrash metal from the neighbours across the hall. Hate seems to permeate the plaster walls, crackling like the power lines hidden beneath the flaking paint.  
“Becca!” Bucky thumps the door again. He’ll break it down if he has to. He’ll dig his fingers into the wood and tear it off the hinges if he-  
“What?!” The door swings open, a bulky, hatchet-faced man looming in the frame. He’s maybe an inch or two shorter than Bucky, with greased back hair and a permanent sneer.  
“Who is it, Jack?” calls a voice from behind him, and Bucky shoulders his way past the thug and into the room.   
“Where the fuck is my sister?” Bucky snarls, and the man rises from his position on the couch. He looks like every fucker who ever picked a fight with Bucky after school rolled into one, all swagger and broken nose.  
“Oh look” he sneers. “Big brother’s come to the rescue.”  
His knuckles are bloody, and Bucky doesn’t think, just pulls back his fist and strikes, cracking him on the nose. It’s been broken once, it can stand to be broken again.  
The guy roars, and his buddy Jack comes lunging for Bucky. He spins around, kicking out and driving the heel of his boot into the guy’s crotch. Jack lets out a shrill sound, dropping to his knees, and Bucky doesn’t wait around. They’ll be disoriented a second or two, but then they’ll be pissed.

“Becs!” Bucky tears through the apartment, shoving open the door to the bedroom and backing out as soon as he sees its empty. The bathroom door clicks, as though a lock is being turned, and the door cracks open.  
“Bucky?”  
There’s a bruise forming on her cheek, a tear in the sleeve of her dress where it meets her shoulder, but it’s the smear of mascara under her eyes that makes Bucky want to break someone's neck.  
“C’mon,” Bucky gestures for her to come closer. “Time to go.”  
“What the…” The asshole straightens up, glowering at Becca. “You’re not going anywhere.”  
Bucky wraps his hand around his sister’s. “Let’s go, Becs,” he says firmly.  
The guy lunges towards him, and Bucky sidesteps, shoving his sister out of the way. He swings his fist around, aiming for the ear and catching the guy’s shoulder before bringing his other hand up and punching him in the throat. The guy gasps, staggering back, and Jack punches Bucky in the jaw. Bucky is stunned for a second, long enough to get knocked back by a second blow to the stomach. He’s too rattled to think clearly or aim well, so reaches for the bastard’s crotch and squeezes.  
A straight man won’t ever touch another guy’s junk, it’s unthinkable, but Bucky has no qualms about such things. He gives the handful a vicious twist and Jack shrieks, dropping to his knees.  
When Bucky turns to get Becca she is vigorously kicking the other guy in the kidney, calling him a bastard every time she brings down her foot, and Bucky grabs her arm, pulling her away.  
“Gotta go!” he yells as the pair of them start swaying to their feet.

Becca grabs her coat as they head for the door, wheeling around before they’ve even made it that far.  
“My bag,” she says as Jack glares at them. She points, and Bucky can see it on the floor by the couch.   
He shoves the car keys into her hand. “Get in the truck.”  
“Bucky-”  
“In the truck.” Bucky gives her a shove before turning back. “Go.”  
“Brock!” Jack warns, and Bucky dodges his swinging fist, diving over the couch and snagging the bag before scrambling to his feet. The pair of them rush him, and Bucky gets another punch to the gut, but he has no interest in sticking around, and lets them swing and jab while he bolts for the door.  
Becca is already in the car, pushing open the driver’s door as Bucky bursts out of the apartment block and across the darkened parking lot, the two bastards chasing after him. He throws the bag into her lap before climbing in, gunning the engine and putting the pickup into reverse before he even thinks of getting the door.  
Something has the two guys falter as they approach the car, and Bucky doesn’t question it, reversing the car out onto the street before reaching out to slam shut the door. Whatever made them hesitate seems to pass, and they start moving again.  
“Bucky!” Becca yells as Brock’s hand brushes the bonnet.  
“Yeah, I noticed!” Bucky yells, letting up on the gas and twisting the wheel as hard as he can. The car spins around ninety degrees and he hauls the wheel back, shifting the gearstick into forward and wincing as the gears grind and catch. Becca yelps, thrown around in her seat, and Bucky hits the gas again, pulling the wheel straight as the car speeds off.

For a long time he’s too shaken to say anything, keeping his mouth clamped shut while he navigates back to the freeway. Beside him Becca can’t seem to stop talking, a panicked, restless chatter that only serves to put Bucky’s teeth on edge.  
“-so he invites me round to his place, right?”  
Bucky glances up at the pouch hanging from the rear view mirror, and wonders what the hell is in there, and if he can get hold of more of it, maybe enough to fill a sleeping bag, he can cram Becca in there and zip it shut.  
“-and his buddy Jack is sat there on the couch. Like _right_ there. With this look on his face, like ugh disgusting.”  
Bucky’s grip tightens on the steering wheel, the plastic squeaking under his fingers. He can’t take his eyes off the road, dark but for the cones of light thrown out by his headlights.  
“-and Brock is there expecting me to do them both? Like what the-”  
And there’s the breaking point.  
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Bucky yells, gaze flicking over to her before returning to the road.  
Becca falls into a stunned silence, Bucky’s voice striking her like an open palm. “I don’t know,” she says at last.

Time loses any sense of meaning as mile after mile of road passes under their wheels. Little by little Bucky’s grip on the steering wheel eases, the tension in his jaw lessens, though the bruise on his cheek doesn’t ache any less. Beside him Becca is quiet, bag in her lap and expression shuttered, staring out of the window as if she could divine meaning from the shadows.  
“I had a friend,” she says slowly, picking the words with care. Bucky has always been the more level-headed of the two of them, the first one to apologise after a fight. Maybe that’s why these things never come easily to her.  
“Brock got her in a bad way, and no one cared.” Her voice pitches up in frustration. “The cops wouldn’t do a thing without her making a statement and she was too fucking scared, y’know?”  
Bucky chews on the inside of his cheek. He should have ripped the guy’s balls off.  
“I thought…” Becca hesitates. “I thought I could…”  
“What?” Bucky hisses. “Kill him?”  
“No!” Becca gasps. “I just… I don’t know.”  
“For fuck’s sake, Becs!” Bucky snaps. “Guys like that don’t _love_. I can’t believe you…”  
Bucky trails off, and risks taking a hand off the wheel to rub his aching head. He presses on a bruise and winces, flinching away. Without meaning to he thinks of the other guys she’s run around with the last few years, dropping them before things get serious, and an ugly notion bobs up in his mind like a corpse in a lake.  
“Tell me you’ve not done this before.”  
“What? No!” Becca spins around in her seat to face him. “I don’t kill people with my _cursed vagina_!”

Bucky knows his sister, he knows that she’s pissed. Pissed at him for asking, pissed at herself for what she’s done and most of all pissed at living in a world that lets men get away with this shit. She’s pissed and Bucky should sympathise, but instead he starts laughing.   
It starts as a chuckle and builds into a roar, tears pricking at his eyes that he has to swipe away before they blind him.  
“Your what?” Bucky wheezes, and Becca punches his arm.  
“Shut up, you know what I mean.”  
“No, no, no.” Bucky clears his throat, trying to pull himself together, but a fresh bubble of laughter builds up in his throat, and he clicks on the indicator, pulling over onto the side of the road until he can get himself together.   
“Asshole,” she mutters, but there’s no sting in the word.  
Bucky leans back in his seat, staring up at the ceiling and feeling the last of the adrenaline shaking through his veins ebb away. “I gotta give you points for creativity,” he snorts, and gets another punch, harder this time.  
“Shut up!”  
“I mean can you imagine it in court?”  
“I hate you, shut up!”  
Bucky wipes his nose with his sleeve, drawing in a ragged breath. He looks over at his sister, at the bruise on her cheek and the smear of blood on her upper lip. “You okay, Becs?”  
She nods, tired and sincere. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”  
Bucky starts up the engine, pulling out onto the road and towards home.

*

They manage to catch the tide, and drive out to the island without having to wait. Becca, dozing in the passenger sit, stirs and opens her eyes at the boom and roar of the sea, wriggling herself upright and winding down the window. The sky is overcast, a strong wind pulling at the waves, and she sticks out her hand. Spray speckles her fingers, hanging like diamonds from her chipped purple nails.  
The twins come rushing to the door as the pickup pulls up, dressed in their weekend clothes. Bucky bites down on a sigh at the sight of them, of course the Aunts weren’t going to send them to school.  
“Aunt Becs!” Wanda screeches, tumbling down the steps and onto the path. Becca cracks open the truck’s door and climbs out, letting out a soft ‘oof’ as Wanda ploughs into her, followed a moment later by Pietro.  
“Look at you two!” she exclaims, fingers brushing through Pietro’s fading silver hair. “You’ve gotten so big!”  
Bucky hauls himself out of the pickup, muscles aching, and leans against the hood to watch as the twins lead his sister up to the house where the Aunts are waiting. There’s no part of him that doesn’t ache, from the bruises blossoming on his body to his aching joints from driving ten hours straight.  
“Bucky,” Aunt Angie calls to him. “Come on, we need the bed setting up in the upstairs room.”  
Bucky lets his shoulders sag for a moment, carefully not cursing. He walks up the path to the door, catching sight of the Aunts bustling Becca into the kitchen for coffee. Pietro hovers in the doorway, giving the kitchen door a wary look.  
“There’s too many girls in this house, dad,” he says suddenly.  
“Yeah.” Bucky scrubs a hand through the boy’s hair. It needs respraying, and Bucky will have silver fingers for a week. “I promise I’ll bring a boy next time. You wanna help me set up the bed?”  
Pietro gives the kitchen another baleful look, just in time to catch a trill of laughter. “Yup.”

Wanda comes clattering up the stairs with a bundle of clean bedding when Bucky and Pietro are finishing up with the bed. The instructions are long gone, but Bucky vaguely remembered how it was all supposed to fit together from the last time he’d built it. Pietro still got out his phone and started googling, finding a copy of the instructions someone had put up online, and after three attempts they have only two screw-things leftover and it looks like a bed, so Bucky is willing to call it done.  
There are boxes piled up in one corner, things Becca left behind in her rush to move out, and Wanda lifts the lid on one while Bucky puts the mattress in place.  
“No peeking,” he warns, and Wanda lets the lid drop.  
Her patience is rewarded a few minutes later when Becca comes up to see how they’re getting on. Her cheek is shiny with salve, and her skin has lost that sallow, drawn quality. She offers him a cup of coffee and Bucky, with some regret, turns it down. He’s been up the whole damn night and is in serious need of sleep, anything else can wait.  
Becca takes her coffee over to the boxes and starts unpacking, quickly finding the boxes of clothing and pulling items out to lay on the newly made bed. Wanda takes a sudden interest, fingering the spill of silver chains and chunky rings, and Bucky gives them maybe ten minutes before they start playing dress-up.  
“Run,” he hisses to Pietro. “Before they give you a makeover.”  
Pietro gulps audibly before clattering down the stairs, yelling for Aunt Angie.

Bucky collects up the last few screws and the little key doohickey, half listening as Becca and Wanda go through her boxes. By the time he gets back from the box room Wanda is wearing Becca’s old leather jacket, not the black one that she wore until it fell apart, but a red one Bucky is pretty sure she wore once and then abandoned. Wanda turns in a circle for her dad’s approval.  
“Aunt Becca says I can have it!” she says, eyes wide. “Can I? Please, Daddy?”  
Bucky folds his arms and leans against the doorframe. “Oh, it’s Daddy now, is it?”  
Becca gives him a beseeching look. The jacket is too long on Wanda, but she’ll grow into it.   
“Only for weekends,” Bucky says sternly. “No wearing it at school, people will think you’re a hoodlum.”  
Wanda lets out a delighted squeak, bouncing up and down, and Bucky makes himself scarce before he’s coerced into any more talk of fashion.   
He heads downstairs to check in with the Aunts, and gets sent to the shower with a jar of arnica cream. Washed and shaved, he feels a little more human, and dabs the cream on his bruises while the steam clears. He brushes his teeth, leaving the jar on the shelf, and heads back upstairs to make friends with his bed.  
He can hear Wanda and Becca talking as he walks up the stairs, snatches of conversation that makes him pause. _Star. Ship. Eyes of blue and green._  
“What are you two doing?” Bucky says, peering through the open door.  
Wanda’s head snaps up. She’s sitting cross-legged beside Becca, a book in her lap. “Is this your spellbook?”  
Bucky walks over, wondering how it had gotten into Becca’s stuff.  
“Yeah,” he says, looking down at the open page. A love spell, he had almost forgotten.  
“Is this about Mama?” Wanda asks, tracing the shapes of flowers and leaves drawn in the margins.   
Bucky skims the spell, half smiling at the things listed there. “Uh. Yeah.”  
“But Mama has green eyes,” Wanda says patiently.  
Bucky shrugs, taking the book from her hands and tucking it under his arm. “I’m going to bed. Don’t burn the house down.”  
“Yeah, we’ll keep it down, Grandpa,” Becca laughs, and Bucky gives Wanda a kiss on the forehead before going in search of sleep, the old spell echoing in his ears.  
_His eyes will be blue and green._


	3. Ostfriesland tea

The boat departs from Rockaway at midday, and Steve watches as the dozen or so tourists huddle together, flinching away from the occasional wave that arcs over the hull and splashes onto the floor. He snorts to himself as elderly couples fret about water on their clothes, glancing back at where his Ma has the rudder.  
Why do they come out here if they’re afraid of getting wet?  
The waters are choppy as they pass Marine Parkway Bridge, and Steve ignores the squeals of alarm as a fresh wave breaks over the bow, his attention on the water. There have been sightings of a Peregrine Falcon on the bridge recently, and he’s determined to see it for himself.  
His Ma calls him away from his search, sending him down to hand out flyers for the 4th of July tour. Steve grumbles a little but gathers up the slips from the cabin and goes out to make small talk with the punters, smiling through gritted teeth as they talk loudly over his head about the _precious little boy_.  
He’s not precocious, he doesn’t _want_ their attention, he does it because his Ma needs him to, and they need every penny they can make.  
The work is seasonal; seal watching in April, dolphins and whales from May to November, and special event tours like the Fourth of July one he’s currently touting. Steve helps out where he can at the weekends, pointing out the gannets at Breezy Point jetty and dolphins off the coast, the whales themselves never making an appearance until they reach the entrance to New York Harbour.  
Steve hands out the slips, talking up the view of the Fourth of July fireworks reflecting off the sea. Every birthday for as long as he can remember has been spent out in the harbour, the sky lit up in red and white and blue, and Steve wouldn’t have it any different.

“Thar she blows!” Ma calls out theatrically as they reach the entrance to the harbour, her voice oddly distorted by the cruisers PA system.  
Up ahead a humpback whale breaks the water, its pectoral fin rising out of the foam as it performs a slow, ponderous roll before diving beneath the surface. The tourists gasp, suitably impressed, and hurry over to the railing to gawp at the open water. Steve ducks back into the cabin and gathers up the clipboards and pens, taking them out and offering them around to people interested in taking part in a whale count. A handful do, though Steve figures it’s 50/50 whether they’ll be any use.  
He spots a little girl maybe a year or two younger than him, her parents distracted by the promise of more whales, and crouches down on the deck beside her. He asks for her help, making a little performance of being bad with numbers, and the girl takes a clipboard eagerly. He leaves her drawing flowers along the bottom of the page.  
Another whale breaches, its massive tail clearing the water and standing against the horizon, water sluicing down from the fringe in a waterfall before crashing down again on the surface. The boom of the tail slapping the sea shakes the cruiser, sending a spray of water that soaks the tourists.  
With the tourists absorbed in the display Steve can take a moment to himself, watching as another whale rises out of the water, jaws unhinged and mouth open wide. They’ll be out here for an hour, time that will fly past, and then it’s back to Rockaway. Steve would stay out here all day if he could, watching the waves, but the tourists get twitchy if they stay out for longer, and they are less impressed by the whales and more concerned with being cold and wet. Steve doesn’t hate people (with a few notable exceptions at school) but it’s hard not to scowl as the gasps of awe become mutterings about dinner, as though the miracle of nature was something you could be bored by.

Something brushes his cheek, and Steve absently plucks at it. A flower, a little white flower with five petals in a star shape. Steve frowns, looking around and seeing nothing but choppy water in every direction. _Where the hell did that come from?_ They were miles from land, and none of the people on board were carrying a bunch of flowers, the strong winds would have torn them to pieces.  
Another flower brushes his cheek, followed by another. He gathers them all up in his hand, fingers curled to keep the breeze from snatching them away again, and carries them into the cabin. His backpack is stashed under one of the seats, and inside is the comic book he’s been saving. With fingers numb and clumsy from the cold he places the flowers between the pages before stowing it away again and going back out to make small talk with the tourists, repeating all the carefully memorised things he knows about whales while they pat him on the head and call him clever boy and aren’t you just darling.  
Gilmore Hodge steals the comic on monday morning, and Steve gets a weeks detention for breaking his nose.

~⛤~

Steve frowns at his Satnav, half wondering if he was still technically in New York. Connecticut isn’t that far, maybe he had crossed the state line without noticing. It would hardly be his fault, between the Long Island Sound and the cluster of tributaries leading to the Atlantic, the demarcations between this state and that are kind of abstract at the best of times.  
He swipes at the screen and sees that the state line is still a distance away, an arbitrary little dotted line slicing out from Byram Point. Steve sweeps the display back to his current position, finding it faintly ridiculous that a body of water, in constant motion, could be regarded as owned by separate states.  
To his right there is the sea, the Atlantic hugging his shoulder like an old friend, the water broken up by a scattering of islands, large and small. There’s one in particular he’s looking for, checking the notes spread out on the passenger seat. _Barnes Island_. There are worse names for the clusters of rocks jutting up from the waves, and Steve wouldn’t give it a second thought but for it being the same name as the person he’s looking for. He wonders which came first, them or the island.

The arrow on the Satnav display directs him right, and Steve makes the turn, following the road through a small town overlooking the sea. It’s a pleasant enough place, with people bustling about in the high street and a large park with a bandstand, and Steve slows to a crawl as he follows the winding road down to the rocky beach.  
He gets no further, the road not so much coming to an end as disappearing into the sea. Steve taps his foot on the brakes, letting the engine idle while he prods at the satnav. On the screen a road winds out for just over a mile, connecting to the island he can see rising out of the waves.  
But there is no road.  
Steve puts the car into reverse, creeping back a little way along the road before stopping again. This time he turns off the engine, taking his keys out of the ignition and climbing out of the car to take a closer look.  
He grudgingly admits that the Satnav isn’t exactly wrong, there is a road. If he walks right up to the water’s edge, mindful of the waves sending spray over the rocks, he can see it, or rather the way the water moves against it. It must only be in use at low tide.  
Steve still debates yanking out the Satnav and pitching it into the sea, but there’s enough plastic clogging up the ocean. He’ll just have to wait for the tide to go out.  
He glances at his watch. Even after all this time he still has a good idea of high and low tide, the little marine fishing vessel he has docked up in Rockaway makes sure of that, even when he struggles to justify the mooring fees. Four hours before he can get onto that road, maybe five.  
He glances back the way he came, and walks back to the car with a mind to getting some lunch.

Quaint isn’t quite the word that comes to mind, walking around the town, but it’s close. There are gift shops devoted to pointless things; like every kind of fairy lights from chili peppers to fabric roses, or driftwood and seaglass hot glued to household objects. There is a store where a man sits in the window making glass ornaments with a blowtorch and little sticks of coloured glass, and near that a store where they make their own chocolate. Steve spends far too long staring through the window as a man pours molten chocolate onto a marble slab, pushing it around with strong, confident motions before picking up what looks like a plasterers tool and scraping it all into a bowl. Despite the array of chocolates on display Steve really needs something with a vegetable or two in it, and goes in search of proper food. He finds a busy place that sells burritos, presided over by a round, grey haired woman who looks somewhere between sixty and a thousand. She orders Steve to sit in a corner, ignoring his insistence that he wants food to-go, and he dutifully plants himself down next to a jukebox, half deafened by the strains of _Sheila take a bow._  
He has no idea what’s in the burrito that’s slammed down on the table in front of him, alongside a bottle of luminous green soda that is about the sugariest thing he’s ever tasted. But it’s the best he’s ever eaten and the soda cuts through the burn of habanero, bringing out their sweetness despite the way they make his eyes water.  
Steve passes on his thanks to the guy at the register as he pays, and when he asks where to go for some local history he gets sent to the local bookstore.

“Hello?”  
The door to the bookstore is cracked open to let in the fresh air, the sign over the door assuring all who enter that it is Erskine’s Books & Antiquities. Even so, Steve feels like he’s walking into someone’s front room.  
There is no cashiers desk. There’s not even a cash register. He pushes the door back the way he found it and takes a look around. In every direction there are shelves crammed with books of every size, with old, overstuffed armchairs tucked into unobtrusive corners here and there.  
The room is deserted, so Steve walks through an open archway into another room filled with books in search of the proprietor, then another and then another, until he is in danger of being lost in a maze.  
“Yes?”  
A face pops up behind a stack of biographies, his shock of grey hair and wire-framed glasses making Steve think briefly of a meerkat.  
“Mr Erskine?” Steve asks cautiously, and the man nods, tucking a book under his arm and shambling out to greet him.  
“Yes, Abraham Erskine.” When he takes Steve’s hand his grip is firm but not aggressive, and he gives it a quick shake before letting go to adjust his grip on his book. “What can I do for you?”  
“My name is Steve Rogers.” Steve reaches into his jacket for a card and hands it over. Erskine makes a little performance of reading it, which Steve appreciates, most people pocket it or toss it aside. “I’m a private investigator.”  
“So I see.” Erskine waves the card at him, where Steve’s details are clearly printed. “What can I do for you Steven?”  
Not Mr Rogers. Not Steve. _Steven_.  
Something about the man puts Steve at ease. He radiates trustworthiness, like a favourite uncle, and the question Steve had meant to ask is forgotten in favor of another one. “What can you tell me about Barnes Island?”  
“Ah!” Erskine’s eyes light up. “Now there is a question.”

It turns out that as well as being a bookseller Abraham Erskine is something of a local historian, and passionate about the town’s history. He bustles into a back room and sets about making tea. Steve demurs politely and is ignored, and Erskine immerses himself in a complicated little ceremony involving fine twists of tea leaves brewed up and decanted into a ceramic teapot. The pot gets placed on top of a matching stand, a tealight burning underneath to keep the tea hot.  
Steve sits where he is told, and doesn’t ask for something larger when a miniscule teacup decorated with roses is put before him, alongside a bowl of what looks like pieces of unpolished quartz. Steve frowns, is he supposed to put gravel in his tea? Before he can ask, Erskine sets down a little jug of cream with a handle sticking out of it, and trundles off to get some books.  
Steve carefully grasps the little handle, lifting it out of the cream to reveal a tiny ladle, something a mouse would serve soup with. Erskine comes back with an armful of books, and Steve quickly drops the spoon, sitting back with his hands in his lap.  
“Here we are,” Erskine says, placing the books down on the table. He looks at Steve’s empty teacup, eyebrows raised. “Shall I be mother?”  
Steve has no idea what he means by that, but nods anyway, and Erskine seems pleased by that.

“First you need the _kluntjes_.” He gestures to the bowl of rocks. Steve, wary and glancing back at Erskine to make sure he’s doing it right, uses a set of silver tongs to select a piece and drop it into his tiny cup. Erskine takes the tongs when he’s done with them, taking a moment to select a decent sized piece, and drops it into his cup with a clatter.  
“Now the tea.” Erskine pours tea into first Steve’s cup, then his own. The lump of what Steve had thought was quartz cracks on contact with the hot tea, fragments crumbling away and dissolving.  
“It’s sugar!” Steve says, relief warring with… well… he doesn’t take sugar in tea.  
“Of course it’s sugar,” Erskine smiles, picking up the jug of cream. “What else would it be?”  
He lifts a tiny ladleful of cream, reaching over to Steve’s cup first, and gently pours it in a circular motion along the rim of the cup, sitting back in satisfaction as the cream billows through the tea in swirling clouds. He repeats the action with his own cup before putting the jug down and turning to his pile of books.  
Steve picks up the teaspoon lying on the table beside him with a mind to stirring his sugary tea, and Erskine shakes his head.  
“No, no, my boy. You must drink it as it is!” He flicks through the pages of his book, large and leather bound. “That is the beauty of Ostfriesland tea, no two sips are the same! First one might taste only cream, and then only tea. It is a delight for the senses.”  
Steve isn’t entirely sure that a cup of tea can be that impressive, but picks up his cup carefully before taking a sip. “Very nice,” he says politely, and Erskine beams at him.

While Steve sips at his tea, teeth aching as it gets sweeter and sweeter going down, the half-dissolved sugar at the bottom forming a gritty sediment, Erskine mutters under his breath, letting out a shout of delight when he finds what he’s looking for.  
“Here we are. Barnes Island.” Erskine pauses to sip his tea. “The island was unnamed until 1703, when the Witch Maria Barnes was banished from the mainland.” He hums, skipping over several sentences. “From what I can infer, she aided the townfolk in the yellow fever epidemic of 1702, and when the threat passed she demanded payment for her work. The magistrate did not care for a woman telling him what to do.” Erskine glances up at Steve. “Though there are some anecdotal references that suggest her rejecting his advances were the main cause of that.”  
Steve looks incredulous. “A Witch?”  
Erskine nods, turning back to the index in the front of the book. “Yes. The magistrate was something of a dabbler himself.” He turns the book around, revealing a portrait of an older man who must have been handsome in his youth. His rugged features seem kindly, not those of a man who would banish a woman to a rock in the ocean. _Pierce, A_ is written underneath in copperplate script.

“A Witch,” Steve repeats as Erskine turns the book back, turning the pages until he finds what he’s looking for.  
“Yes, a Witch.” Erskine taps at another entry. “The Barnes continued to inhabit the island, coming to the mainland infrequently for supplies and, ah.” Erskine clears his throat. “Companionship. Desperate townsfolk, with sick children or hearts, would sail out to the island on occasion, to plead their cases, and the Witch would offer aid or not, depending on the circumstances.”  
Erskine pauses to pour more tea, and Steve is quietly relieved that he isn’t expected to add more sugar to the sticky silt in his cup. He tries to picture the Witch of Barnes Island, a withered old crone hundreds of years old. With the tea poured, Erskine returns to his books.  
“On occasion the townsfolk would take umbrage to the Witch's presence, and sail out to the island with torches and muskets, determined to see an end to the curse. Their boats would be swept out to sea.”  
Steve blanches, his grip on his cup tightening. Erskine doesn’t seem to notice, reading out lines and paragraphs as he happens upon them.  
“It was the 1918 influenza epidemic that rallied the people around. Over 30,000 people died in New York in that winter, but scarcely a dozen were lost in the town. The Witch presided over the sick and the at risk, and when the disease had run its course, the townfolk promised to build a road connecting the island to the mainland, so that the Witch could come and go as they pleased.

Erskine closes the book with a satisfied look, sitting back to finish his tea.  
Steve’s brow furrows. Of all the things he had expected to find when he came into town, this was not it.  
“So the curse was lifted?” he asks.  
“No, not in the slightest.” Erskine shakes his head, putting down his cup and retrieving another book. It takes little time to find the right page, and Steve can’t shake the suspicion that it has been read through many times over. “Any man who dares to love a Barnes will die.” He shuts the book with a snap, giving Steve an expectant look.  
“That’s it?” Steve asks.  
Erskine shrugs. “Well now, there’s a lot more to it. Details, specifics, so on and such forth.” His shoulders twitch up. “They will live briefly in euphoria, and then they will die.”  
“That’s…” _Ridiculous_ comes to mind.  
“Tragic? Yes.” Erskine sighs, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. “They are good people, kind people. We are very grateful to them, especially now you don’t have to sail all the way out to the island, just go to their store in town. But yes. Very tragic.”  
Steve swallows the last of his tea, the sugar gritty against his teeth, too-sweet and making his throat twist.  
He thanks Erskine for his time, and his tea, and asks for directions to the Witch’s store.

Steve isn’t sure why he wants to see the store (okay, he knows exactly why he wants to see it, just not why it matters so much that he does). It’s not far, and he cuts through the park, crossing over the little wooden bridge that spans a river thick with water lilies that makes him want to take up painting.  
If Sam could see him now, chasing a white rabbit instead of following the damned lead like he’s supposed to, he’d laugh his ass off. But then he’d probably encourage Steve to see whatever it was to the end too.  
The store is easy to find, painted a warm yellow that brings out the blue of the flowers on display out front. Steve pauses to press his thumb against one of the blossoms, comparing it to one from his memory in a habit he’s never been able to shake, before opening the door and stepping inside. The flower he’s looking for is white anyway.  
He isn’t sure what he’s expecting as he walks into the bright, welcoming store. An elderly woman, back bent, hunched over a cauldron? The slender figure from the photo Sam had passed on to him back in Washington? Certainly not the guy standing behind the counter, candle in one hand and penknife in the other. He’s shorter than Steve, but then so are most people, with a round, welcoming face and wax in his goatee.  
“Hey buddy,” the man says, drawing the knife along the candle and paring a thin curl of wax. “Be right with you, just gimme a sec.”  
With a sweep of the penknife he opens up the cut, revealing vivid red under the white surface of the candle. He makes another incision, curving and deep, and opens out the wound, dragging the curved tip of the penknife along the edge to curl it outwards.  
Roses. Something seems to slide into place in Steve’s mind and he can see the shape in the carving. Roses, deep red at the center and white tipped at the edge of each petal.  
“There!” The man puts the candle down and takes a step back to admire it. “Pretty sweet, right?”  
Steve nods, impressed. “Very.”

Is this the Witch? Steve hadn’t thought to ask Erskine for a description.  
The man pockets his knife and sweeps the shavings off the counter and into the trash before greeting Steve with a wide smile. “Hey there, and welcome to Barnes. I’m Luis, and I don’t think I’ve seen you round before, right?”  
Before Steve can open his mouth to answer Luis talks over him.  
“But that’s no great shakes, right? Every stranger is a friend you ain’t met yet and all that. So what can I do for you, bro? No wait, lemme guess.” He points a finger at Steve. “Anxiety. We got some tea over on the shelf behind you, or if you’re not a tea drinker you can’t go wrong with rosemary.”  
“I’ve had enough tea, thanks.” Steve’s teeth still ache.  
Luis barely seems to hear him, still studying Steve intently. “Oh, wait. You need to find something that’s lost, right? Well we can sort that shit right out, just need to throw the right stone in the right river.” He shakes his head again. “No. That ain’t it. You need a little bolso, yeah? Something to keep you safe at sea. I can set that right up for you, my man! Just need a little bit of comfrey leaf, a handful of dill seed, maybe a little mustard.” He starts rummaging around under the counter, and Steve finally gets a word in edgeways.  
“Uh. No. I’m looking for-” Steve has read the name a thousand times. Traced the loops and lines of each letter, but has never said it aloud before now. “I’m looking for Bucky.”  
Luis stops what he’s doing. “You bringing trouble?” he asks warily.  
“No.” Steve shakes his head. “Can I speak to… them?”  
Luis relaxes. “He ain’t here today, he’s got a meeting with the school.” He goes back to rummaging around behind the counter, pulling out several glass jars and setting them on the counter. “He always freaks out about those things, and I keep saying to him you got nothing to worry about, those kids of yours are doing great.” Luis pauses in his searching, scratching his chin as he looks at the jars. “Bladderwrack. You definitely need some of that, and maybe a little rock salt.” He goes back to his searching under the counter, his voice muffled but undaunted. “Folks just like to rag on single parents, y’know? And like I see the papers, all that shit they come out with and I’m just daaaamn, y’know?”  
His head pops up again, a tub of cooking salt in his hand, and looks at Steve expectantly.  
“It was just me and my Ma growing up,” Steve says, and it feels like the words are pulled from him rather than offered. “She worked every day of her life.”  
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Luis slams the tub of salt on the counter triumphantly before turning to the shelf behind him. “Now what kind of bag do you want, black or blue?”

When Steve fails to answer Luis grabs a black bag from a box on the shelf, and sets to work filling it with a sprinkle or two from the jars arranged between them.  
“Do you…” Steve says slowly. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”  
“Like I said, he won’t be back today.” Luis pulls the drawstring at the top of the little bag, closing it tightly. “You’re best off going out to the island. You been out there before?”  
Steve shakes his head as Luis ties the drawstring together in a bow, Erskine’s words lingering in his memory.  
“You here about the curse?” Luis fumbles around under the counter before resurfacing with a tin of Danish butter cookies. Steve is about to refuse the offer of one but when Luis pulls off the lid he sees a tangle of sewing supplies, threads of different colours and packs of needles and pins. Luis gives him a grin.  
“You know, I never seen one of these with actual cookies inside, right?”  
Steve nods, and Luis picks out a reel of black thread. “Now I seen a lot of curses in my time, but the Barnes’ have it bad, y’know what I’m saying?” He snips off a length of cotton and threads it through a needle, not waiting for Steve to answer. “I mean most are easy to crack, but the thing is the longer they go on for the harder they are to break. And when it becomes a generational thing, like with Bucky? Well then you got a job on your hands.” He ties a knot at the end of the thread and picks up the bag, sewing the top closed with even little stitches.  
“What do you mean?” Steve is curious, he can’t help it.  
“What I mean is, like, there’s a lot of ways to break a curse. You can slap the curser around until they undo the spell, but since old Alex has been dead what three hundred years that’s not gonna happen. You can burn rosemary and sage, you can wash yourself down with salt and juniper or roll about in the dirt naked.” He raises his eyebrows. “Don’t think that’s Bucky’s style though. But the main thing is you gotta believe that the curse can be broken.”  
“And he doesn’t?” Steve asks.  
Luis nods, fishing the scissors out of the sewing kit and cutting the end of his thread. “The Barnes’ believe in the curse. They believed in it for hundreds of years, and that's not something you can shake.” Luis checks over his work, looking satisfied. “They believe, and that’s why they’re cursed.”  
Steve isn’t sure what to say to that, or how this smiling, hyperverbal man even knows he has a boat, so keeps his mouth shut. Luis holds out the bag, giving him a meaningful look that is somewhat lost on him. “So I’m telling you to reject that shit. Throw it out, don’t let it in your head.”  
“I don’t believe in curses,” Steve tells him, taking the bag. It feels like the hacky sacks kids used to throw around when he was at school, and smells of spices and the sea.  
“That’s the spirit, brah!” Luis leans over the counter to clap him on the shoulder. “That’ll be twenty bucks.”  
Steve gives the bundle a dubious squeeze, and reaches into his pocket for his wallet.

*

By the time Steve returns to the sea the tide is on its way out, the road briefly visible here and there between the waves. He had expected it to be a straight shot to the island but the track meanders, twisting back and forth like a sea serpent. As the water recedes he sees flat sheets of rock rising up from the sand, the surfaces worn into irregular jags by the waves. It will still be a while before he can risk driving out, so he sits on the hood of his car, listening to the boom and swell of the tide, and pulls the letter out of his pocket.  
It is creased and fuzzed around the edges, folded and refolded a hundred times or more. He could recite it from memory, close his eyes and see the slanted loops and angled lines of each letter. He could, but he doesn’t, unfolding the lined notepaper and telling himself he needs to read it just one more time.

_Dear Becs_  
_I know I’ve never taken Aunt Angie seriously, but Pietro set his telescope on Mercury and, okay, it looks like it’s spinning the wrong way. But before you start asking me to pay up, he says it’s not actually going backwards, we’re just spinning faster than it is right now. He also says I gotta ask Sharon from the PTA out, but I think the kids are up to something because Wanda is trying to set me up with that guy from the library. You remember when Aunt Peggy used to lecture us on improper use of spells? Yeah, that’s nothing to a 12 year old telling you that it’s been five years and you gotta put yourself out there._

_Damn, you’d think over the years it would stop knocking me on the ass, but it doesn’t. I love those kids. I love them even when Wanda calls me old. Hell, I love them especially when Wanda calls me old._  
_They miss you. I’m not putting pressure on you or anything, I’m just saying it so you know how much you’re loved. Aunt Angie always said a bird could only fly so far knowing there’s a roost to return to when they’re tired. So keep flying, little bird._  
_I miss you too._

_You asked if I had forgiven Peggy. I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. I understand why she did it, and although it didn’t work out, I wouldn’t have the kids otherwise and I can’t bear the thought of not having them. Wishing things had turned out different is a waste of a wish, and all wishes are still going to the Pirate Ship Fund. Just you wait, Becs. We’ll be the scourge of the seven seas, or at least Connecticut._  
_I keep telling the twins no. I’m too busy to go on dates. But that’s not it, I mean who would want me? Even without the curse. No matter how much I work there’s still work piling up and no money to show for it. I live with a pair of meddling (beautiful, kind, helpful please don’t hex me if you get hold of this) old ladies and two almost teenagers. I._  
_Maybe I’ve had my happiness. _

Steve rubs his thumb over the name at the bottom of the page. _Bucky_. He folds up the letter, slipping it back into his pocket and climbing into the car. The road is clear of the waves, and he drives at a crawl out to the island.

Whatever vague thoughts he had about Robinson Crusoe and Witches cottages, they vanish at the sight of the house. It’s not a crumbling ruin or sun-bleached shack but a grand looking manor house, with climbing roses scrambling across the stonework and a path lined with flowers leading to the front door.  
It looks like a home.  
Steve parks by the gate, pausing at the white painted fence where pink and purple flowers drape over the top. There is a gate, but it has been left open, as if in welcome, and Steve walks up to the front door, lungs filling with the sweet scent of flowers he cannot name.  
He knocks on the door, and after a moment it opens, revealing a boy of eleven or twelve with bright silver hair. He is wearing a NASA logo t-shirt, and holding an egg whisk coated in batter.  
“Finally!” He shouts, grabbing Steve by the wrist and hauling him across the threshold.  
“Uh?” Steve manages as the kid drags him through the hall and towards a large, cluttered kitchen where a girl of around the same age is prodding a skillet with a spatula while a big black cat watches hungrily.  
“Daaaaad!” There is an open door leading to a large garden, and the kid sticks his head out, looking around for someone. “We got one more for dinner!”  
There is a pause, and Steve fidgets in the boys grip. He should really extricate himself and go find an adult to talk to. Maybe whoever the kid is yelling at.  
“Alright, but they gotta make their own pancakes,” comes the shout back from the garden, and the kid lets out a triumphant yell before hauling Steve into the kitchen and thrusting the whisk at him.  
“You heard my Dad, get to work.”  
While Steve stares at the whisk, batter dripping onto his sleeve, the kid bounds over to the stove to join the girl.  
Steve gives a last look through the open doorway, then follows him.

The girl has been busy, and there is already a small stack of pancakes on the plate beside her. Most of them are round, but Steve can see that she’s been trying to do a few other shapes.  
“This is your dinner?” Steve asks incredulously. On the table there is a large bowl of fruit salad and a jug of cream which another cat is studiously ignoring, tail flicking back and forth.  
“Yeah,” the boy snags a piece of pancake, narrowly avoiding a swat on the hand. “It was my turn to pick dinner, so we’re having pancakes.”  
“You can’t have pancakes for dinner,” Steve says doubtfully, and both twins fix him with an unimpressed look.  
“Maybe you can’t,” the girl says crisply. “But we are.”  
“Alright,” Steve gives in, going over to the sink to wash his hands. “We’re making pancakes.”  
The girl picks up the cat and moves out of the way when he comes to the stove, letting him near the skillet and the jug of batter. She puts the cat on the floor and goes to fetch extra plates and cutlery, while the boy watches intently, snagging another piece of misshapen pancake that looks like it might have been a star. Or maybe a cactus. Steve checks the skillet and gives the batter a stir before pouring some out in a thin drizzle, a quick, deft movement that creates a five pointed star. He adds a drop more batter to fill in the gaps in a couple of points, and when he sees bubbles appear in the batter picks up the skillet and flips it, tossing the pancake high in the air and catching it on the other side.  
“Woah,” the boy breathes, suitably impressed. “You made a star!”  
“Yeah.” Steve slips the star onto the plate. “I like stars.”  
“Can you make a rocket?” he asks, eyes wide, and Steve picks up the jug again.

Before too long Steve has a rocket, a slightly blobby fish, and several stars. Both kids crowd around him, full of ideas for what to make next. Steve vetoes most of them, but manages a passable pineapple and a truly awful dinosaur before going back to stars, all the while trying to answer the barrage of questions they throw at him while sneaking pieces of misshapen pterodactyl.  
How old are you? Can you swim? What’s your job? Are you married? Have you ever been stung by a bee and had your face swell up? As interrogation techniques go, the Spanish Inquisition could learn a few things from two pre-teens hopped up on sugar.  
Steve must say something interesting, because they suddenly fall silent, retreating to a corner to whisper to each other. Steve can’t catch what they’re saying, and his shoulders tense a little as they come back, one either side of him.  
“Have you ever seen a whale?” the girl asks.  
“Yeah,” Steve flips another pancake. “Lots of times.”  
They whisper behind his back again, but they sound excited.  
“Do you have a pirate ship?” the boy asks, wary and oddly hopeful.  
“No.”  
They both let out a disappointed whine, sagging like balloons with a slow puncture. Steve bites back a laugh, and puts them out of their misery.  
“I have a sloop.” He is met with twin blank stares. “It’s a kind of boat, about 30 feet long. Has a diesel engine but it’s also got a sail.”  
The kids turn to each other, the boy almost vibrating with delight. “I _knew_ it!” he screams, and goes tearing out of the kitchen and into the garden, the girl racing after him, almost knocking someone off their feet.  
“Knew what?” comes a soft voice from the doorway.  
Steve spins around, skillet in hand, and comes face to face with who he can only assume is Bucky Barnes.

The man in the doorway pauses, looking at Steve as if they might have met before and he is blanking on the name, and Steve stares back at him, the last pancake still sliding along the skillet.  
By habit Steve catalogues the details of his appearance - blue eyes, brown hair curling down to his shoulders, a soft, grey sweater that doesn’t quite disguise the breadth of his shoulders. A kind smile as he nods to the skillet. “What is that, a rabbit?”  
Steve looks down at the skillet, quickly straightening it up. “It was supposed to be a cat,” he admits.  
Bucky Barnes tips his head to one side, giving the cat-rabbit pancake another assessment. “Yeah, I can see that.” He grabs the jug of cream and bowl of fruit salad from the table. “We’re eating in the garden, that okay?”  
Steve nods, slipping the cat-rabbit onto the stack of pancakes and turning off the burner. Bucky waits for him to put down the skillet and pick up the platter, and leads him outside.

If Steve had thought the kitchen table was big it was nothing compared to the one in the garden, which he doubts would even fit through a doorway. It is made from what looks to be a single slice down the center of a tree, complete with rough, irregular bark edges and the tangle of a root system at one end, barely visible under the plates and bowls and jugs that cover the surface. Steve needn’t have worried about only eating pancakes, there is a large wooden bowl of salad and a platter of cheeses, loaves of bread, and jars of brined olives and dill pickles. Around the table sit a pair of elderly women, bright eyed and mischievous looking as they whisper to the twins, and a woman Steve recognises as Rebecca Barnes. She notices Steve looking immediately, and gives him a slow appraisal that makes Steve’s ears burn. Wanda tugs at Rebecca’s elbow and starts whispering in her ear.  
Bucky nudges a breadboard to the side, putting the fruit salad and cream down in the space made, and clears a place for the plate of pancakes, nodding to Steve to put them down. The plate has barely touched the table when the boy grabs a star shaped pancake, and bites off one of the points with an expansive sigh of satisfaction. The girl gives him an unimpressed look before taking one shaped like a butterfly.

“Sit,” Bucky reminds him, and Steve takes the empty chair next to him. Rebecca, sat between the twins and the old ladies, is muttering something to them, the girl hanging on her shoulder. The ladies listen intently, glancing his way and elbowing each other under the table when Bucky isn’t looking, and one of them finally speaks.  
“Bucky, who’s your new friend?” she asks, and Bucky glances over at Steve, again with that look of puzzlement, as though he should know the answer but he can’t seem to remember.  
“Steve,” Steve answers for him. “Steve Rogers.”  
Bucky nods, as if to say _of course it is_, and hands him a plate.  
“Steve made the pancakes,” the boy adds, his mouth full.  
“Pietro, eating or talking, you gotta pick one,” Bucky chides gently, offering the pancakes to the ladies.  
“Ooh, a Jackalope,” one says, spearing the cat-rabbit with a fork and holding it up. “Look at that, Peg.”  
Peg helps herself to a star before Bucky offers the plate to Steve and finally takes another star for himself.  
When Steve has eaten his token pancake he is plied with bread and cheese and pickles. No one seems to mind that he is there, or even ask why. He listens to the ladies bicker and joke and the twins talk about their day at school, something brittle and painful lodging in his chest. Bucky glances his way each time his heart seems to burn, asking softly if he is okay, and offering more water from one of the jugs on the table.  
Steve is hyper aware of the women sat across from him, watching in barely suppressed delight, and tries to keep his cheeks from burning by sheer willpower.

“So tell me Steve,” the other lady, the one Steve is pretty sure is called Angie, folds her hands under her chin. “What brought you here?”  
Steve hesitates, picking up a napkin and wiping his mouth. No more getting distracted, he has a job to get done. “I. Uh. I’m here to speak to Miss Barnes.”  
The girl and Rebecca both sit up a little straighter, looking confused and alarmed in equal measure.  
“No you’re not,” the girl says indignantly. “You’re here for-”  
“Rebecca Barnes,” Steve cuts her off, and can feel Bucky fall still beside him. “I wanted to ask you a few questions.” Steve looks around at the family whose dinner he has invaded, shame and maybe a little bit of envy burning like a coal in his gut. “In private.”  
He can feel Bucky staring at him, but doesn’t meet his eye, quickly getting to his feet and pushing his chair under the table. Rebecca gets up too, her hands resting briefly on the shoulders of the girl and Angie before directing Steve back to the house. As they walk away there is a clatter of tableware, and Bucky follows after them. 

Rebecca leads them past the kitchen to the hallway and stops, arms folded and back straight. Bucky moves to her side, a silent, looming shadow, and for a moment Steve aches at the sight of them. His father died months before he was born, and there had been no siblings, no close cousins, and he feels their absence moor keenly now than he has done in the last decade.  
“What’s going on?” Rebecca demands.  
“I said in private,” Steve says, and Bucky shakes his head.  
“I’m not going anywhere,” he stands firm. “Say what you gotta say.”  
“I’m a Special Investigator.” Steve reaches for his wallet, pulling out a card and holding it out. When no one takes it he puts it on a nearby shelf. “Miss Barnes, I’m looking for Brock Rumlow. Do you know where he might be?”  
Rebecca curses loudly, lurching towards him until Bucky lays a hand on her shoulder. “What the hell?” she hisses. “What makes you think I-”  
“You were at his apartment,” Steve says calmly. “Causing a disturbance. He disappeared a short time after.”  
“I was causing a disturbance?” she snarls. “Is that what that bastard across the hall said? Did he say anything about-”  
“Becs,” Bucky says softly, before looking to Steve. “Why are you looking for him?”  
Steve reaches into his jacket and pulls out the envelope Sam had given him less than a week ago. He glances around to make sure the twins aren’t around before pulling out a pair of photographs. He doesn’t look at them, he can’t stomach it again. Rebecca lets out a gasp, and Bucky takes the photos, his expression grim.  
“I’m currently working with the police, trying to locate Mr Rumlow regarding an assault case. I’m showing you these so you understand how important it is that I find him.”  
“He did this?” Bucky thrusts the photos back at Steve. “Fuck me, Becs. You have the worst taste in men.”  
Rebecca flinches, staring as Steve puts the photos away. “Is she… Is she going to be okay?”  
Steve can’t answer that. He doesn’t know how. “She’ll recover. I can’t say if she’ll be okay.”  
Brother and sister share a look, and something unspoken passes between them. “Don’t,” Bucky whispers.  
“Oh come on, you can’t tell me you’re not thinking-”  
“Don’t,” Bucky repeats, this time with force, and Rebecca seems to crumple in on herself, wrapping her arms over her stomach.

For a long minute no one speaks, Rebecca quiet and pensive, leaning into her brother’s side while Bucky rubs his jaw.  
“I need to find this man before he does this again,” Steve says quietly, and Bucky lets out a sharp, exasperated hiss.  
“Becs called me from Rockville,” he begins, shushing his sister when she tries to stop him. “Asked me to come get her.”  
That ties in with what the neighbours had said, a car pulling up around midnight and an altercation that carried out onto the street.  
“I’m not gonna lie.” Bucky looks him square in the eye, and Steve believes him. “I punched him and he and his buddy punched me back.”  
“Punched you back, you were black and blue!” Rebecca interrupts.  
“We got in the car and drove off,” Bucky finishes. “They were both alive when I last saw them, and pardon me for saying I hope he is dead because if I see him again-”  
Steve holds up his hand, and Bucky catches his tongue. Steve doesn’t believe him capable of killing, but it’s not an admission he wants to hear. “Do you have anyone who can verify that?” Bucky nods to Rebecca, and Steve bites back a sight. “Any impartial witnesses?”  
Bucky shakes his head. “Am I in trouble?”  
“No.” The word comes out involuntarily, before Steve has a chance to think about it. When he does think on it the answer is still no. Steve will not see trouble come to this quiet, kind man on his island of cats and troublemakers. “The investigation is ongoing. Thank you for your time.”

Thanking people for their time is usually Steve’s exit line. People nod, relieved, and practically shove him out the door. Bucky doesn’t do any of those things, his stare like a paring knife against Steve’s skin, the slightest flinch cutting him to the bone.  
“Becs, go check on the aunts,” he says, gaze unwavering. “Tell them what’s going on.”  
Rebecca gives his arm a quick squeeze and retreats, heading back out to the garden while Bucky remains where he is, pinning Steve in place with the force of his stare.  
“Mr Barnes,” Steve begins quietly.  
“How did you know she’d be here?” Bucky asks, quiet and calm, how can he be so calm?  
Steve tucks his hands into his pockets, buying himself a second or two to think. When he fails to come up with a plan he falls to honesty, reaching for his top pocket and pulling out the letter. “This.”  
It’s hard to meet Bucky’s eyes, but he does.  
“That’s my letter.” Bucky doesn’t look upset, or violated. “You read my letter?”  
“Yes.”  
“That was a very personal letter.”  
Steve takes a slow breath, swallowing down all the things he wants to say about it. “… it was.”  
Steve puts the letter back in his pocket, trying to convince himself that it is evidence that he needs to keep. The lie sits uneasily on his shoulders, forcing his gaze to the floor.

“Why are you here?” The question is asked so softly, Bucky’s voice a barely audible rasp, that Steve almost misses it.  
“I’m investigating the-”  
“Bullshit.” That Steve hears clearly, even without Bucky moving closer. “You could have done that with a phone call. Why are you here?”  
“I was looking for Rebecca Barnes, you seemed like the best place to start.” Steve looks up to find Bucky standing so close he can feel the heat radiating from his skin. “I…”  
Looking back he can’t say who moved first, only that one moment they were apart and the next they were not. Bucky’s hands crumpling the front of his shirt, stretching the cotton taut as he pulls Steve in to him. Hair, dark and silken, tangling in Steve’s fingers. Bucky’s tongue in his mouth, hot and sweet and starving.  
Steve will not remember the taste of his lips, of summer berries and burnt batter. He won’t remember the low gasps between kisses in those moments they break apart for long enough to catch their breaths and not a moment longer. He will only remember the sudden shock of cold as Bucky wrenches away, the hands that moments before grasped at his shirt pushing him away.  
“Bucky?” he manages to gasp, but Bucky is staggering away from him, back up against the wall.  
“Eyes of blue and green,” he rasps, hand reaching up to his mouth. “Your eyes are blue and green.”  
Steve stares at him dumbly. There are strands of Bucky’s hair caught in his fingers. He can’t help what colour his eyes are.  
“You need to leave.” Bucky drags the heel of his hand across his mouth, and Steve could swear that the room seems a little darker.  
“What?” Steve can’t think, can’t understand what he did wrong. Can’t figure out how to fix it.  
“Now. Before you miss the tide.” Bucky says, his voice shaking. He looks heartbroken, a wrecked ship lurching towards the shore. “Don’t come back.”

Steve will not remember walking out to the car, moving like a puppet on tangled strings. He will not remember the drive to the mainland, the incoming tide lapping over the road and spraying salt on the windshield. When he reaches the shore he regains his senses, spinning the car around only to see the road vanish beneath the waves. Salt on his lips, and everything that had seemed within reach washed away.


	4. Chamomile

The greenhouse has been Bucky’s domain for as long as he has lived in the house.   
The cottage garden leading at the front of the house is Aunt Angie’s work but it belongs to her wife, and the vegetable patch and floral borders at the back are shared by everyone, but the greenhouse belongs to Bucky. Aunt Peggy had told him the day after they had arrived, scared and hurting. _This is yours, if you want it_ and yes, he had wanted. After years of struggling to grow anything in yoghurt pots in the sallow light of Brooklyn he wanted. So he rubbed his stinging eyes and got to work.  
The Aunts helped, more than he realised at the time, keeping their distance until they were needed. Boxes to store the stacks of old pots or glasses of lemonade or buckets of soapy water with rags floating on the surface like jellyfish, they all appeared almost the instant Bucky needed them. He scrubbed all the greenhouse windows until they gleamed, and rebuilt the old shelves with a conveniently placed hammer and box of nails, and filled the freshly scrubbed pots with soil and seeds, until every last inch of space was crammed with green. 

“Bucky?” Becca peers through the open door of the greenhouse, catching sight of him amongst the verdant growth. Spring is finally in the air, but the cats still gravitate to the greenhouse, spreading out between the pots to doze in the heat as the sun goes down. Bucky likes their company enough to tolerate the occasional spill, and Morita’s habit of looking at a freshly sown seed tray and seeing a cat bed. He’s fast asleep in a tray of sweet peas, paws tucked under him and looking for all the world like an unbaked loaf of bread.   
“Yeah?” Bucky tucks a wooden bowl under his arm, checking the notebook propped open on the shelf beside him. “Blue,” he murmurs, picking a flower from a hanging basket. “And green.” He plucks a leaf from the same plant, and places them both in the bowl.  
“Are you doing a spell?” Becca asks eagerly, stepping over a cat as she comes into the greenhouse to join him. “You said you were going to quit?”  
“I am,” Bucky replies. “I just need to do this first.”  
She peers into the bowl, at the bay leaves twisted into the shape of a little boat and the handful of flowers sitting at the bottom. “What are you making?”  
“Shh,” Bucky checks his notes again, before reaching for a tiny jasmine flower. “His favourite shape will be a star.”

Becca watches him move around the greenhouse, plucking flowers and leaves as he tells them their purpose, and her expression darkens.  
“Hey! You’re making a love spell!” she whines, outraged. “That’s not fair! When I wanted to do one Aunt Angie said I couldn’t, and anyway you said ‘he’ I thought you weren’t going to be bi anymore either.”  
Bucky gives her a sour look. “You wanted to cast a spell to make Tony leave his girlfriend and run away with you,” he points out. “You don’t cast love spells on people, that’s forcing them to do stuff against their will. Aunt Peggy says that kind of thing comes back to you.”  
“What does it matter,” she sniffs. “We’re cursed anyway.”  
“It matters,” Bucky says firmly, checking his notebook for the next ingredient of the spell.  
“I don’t see why it’s okay for you to cast a love spell and not me,” Becca mutters, churlish.  
“Because he’s not real.” He reaches the end of his list and closes the book. “I made him up. If he’s not real then I can’t fall in love with him, and then he won’t die and break my heart.”  
“Bucky,” Becca says softly, the word edged in sorrow.   
Bucky hands her his notebook before sliding past and heading outside.

They walk through the garden and out to the orchard, Bucky pausing to pick a few apple blossoms and add them to his bowl, before following the path down to the ocean. The waves smash against the rocks, sending up a fine sea spray that catches the sunlight, too bright to look at. Bucky climbs out onto the furthest rock, spray soaking his pants, and holds the bowl out to the ocean.  
It won’t work. If his clothes are soaked then a handful of petals will fare no better.  
The wind whips up around him, catching the curling tips of his damp hair, and Bucky grips the bowl tighter.  
The first flower rises up into the air, the star-shaped one. The leaf boat follows it, sailing upwards into the sky, and then another and another until the bowl is empty. Bucky shields his eyes with one hand, trying to catch sight of flurry of petals, but he sees nothing. 

~⛤~

“Bucky, dear,” Aunt Angie says in her sweetest tone. “Have you considered, I don’t know, going outside for a little while?” She regards him sympathetically as she puts down a cup of pungently floral tea. “You sit at the table much longer you’re gonna put down roots.”  
Bucky grumbles softly. He is not going to put down roots, he’s only been sat here - he glances at the clock - oh, nearly five hours. Okay, maybe she has a point.  
He opens his mouth to say ‘You’re absolutely right, I can’t wallow in self-pity forever’ but what actually comes out is “It’s Sunday.”  
“Yes, I know, sweetheart. And you work very hard but if you don’t get out of my kitchen I will drag you out by the ankles and drop you into the sea.”  
Bucky leans onto the table, pushing his chair back and forcing himself to his feet. There’s plants in the greenhouse that need potting on for sale, and cuttings to get started on, and getting his hands in the soil has always kept him grounded.  
“Okay, I’m gonna go work in the greenhouse,” he says before Angie shoves him out the kitchen with the broom leaning up against the wall.  
“Don’t forget your tea,” she adds, and Bucky picks up the cup, taking a careful sip. Chamomile with enough Lemon Balm to keep it from tasting like soap.  
The broom falls to the floor with a clatter, though neither of them are anywhere near it.  
“Broom fell,” Angie murmurs to herself, walking over to pick it up. “Company’s coming.”  
Bucky’s traitorous idiot heart kicks in his chest, hard enough to hurt. He rubs at the ache with his knuckles. It’s not him, he’s not coming back.

Out in the sunshine it’s a little easier to put the thought of a visitor to the back of his mind. It doesn’t stay there, lumbering forth just when he thinks he’s got things under control and making his thoughts scatter. He grits his teeth and drinks his floral tea, ignoring the unwelcome notion as best as he can while he transplants marigolds and violas into terracotta pots for the store.   
He doubts that the visitor is even anything to do with him, the twins are old enough for their school friends to brave the road out to the island, pedalling furiously as if the sea might claim them. The promise of the Aunts chocolate cake and a cursed island to explore is one thing, but the idea of having their cards read is like catnip for some of the girls in Wanda’s class.   
And then there are the visitors the Aunts sometimes get, the desperate ones that have them ushering the children outside, giving Bucky a meaningful look. No matter his skills at magic, some things are not a man’s place, and he keeps the kids distracted until they are done.  
So it comes as something of a surprise when the visitor is for him, knocking on the greenhouse door with her red hair and nervous smile.  
“Hey, James.”  
Bucky closes his eyes, taking in a steadying breath. “Natasha.”

Natasha Romanov, the best and worst thing that ever happened to Bucky Barnes. The mother of his children and source of more sleepless nights than he will ever admit. She leans against the doorframe, green eyes bright at the sight of so many flowers.  
“You always did love flowers,” she murmurs, reaching out to touch the soft yellow petal of a marigold. “You must have hated that little apartment in New York.”  
He didn’t hate it. He had loved it, like he had loved her, for all its flaws and because of them.  
“Do I get a hug?” she asks, and Bucky nods, wiping his dirty hands on his pants and walking over to meet her.  
She grabs him, clinging tightly as if expecting him to push her away, and Bucky wraps his arms around her. Later he’ll go down to the rocks and let out all the things that there is no use in saying, far from any prying ears. He’ll let them out so they won’t fester in his lungs, or spill from his tongue unheeded. The sea will take them like it takes everything, and he’ll breathe a little easier. But for now he hugs her back and doesn’t think about how she has changed her perfume again, or how small she seems, or how his arms have been reshaped to hold another.  
He waits until Natasha lets go first, holding her at arms length and looking her over.  
“You look good,” he tells her. It’s not a lie. “Have you seen the kids yet?”  
She hesitates, and Bucky swallows a noise of frustration. “Nat, they’re your kids too. You don’t need my permission to see them. You know that.”  
She responds with a one-shouldered shrug, elegantly encapsulating five years of carefully worded conversations and dancing around each others hurt feelings. “I wanted to see you.”  
Bucky steps back, holding out his arms as best he can without knocking over the pots of sweet peas. “Fill your boots.” He does a slow circle. “How do I look?”  
“Tired,” Nat answers. At least she’s honest.  
“C’mon, they’ll be thrilled to see you,” Bucky nods to the door, and Nat backs out, letting Bucky lead the way back to the house.

The Aunts have been busy, and the garden table is quickly piling up with Aunt Peggy’s third best china and, as if to compensate, Angie’s highly regarded chocolate fudge brownies.  
Becca comes out with several plates tucked under her arm, pausing at the sight of Natasha. Bucky does his best to send _be nice_ signals to her, mostly by the set of his jaw and lowering of his eyebrows.   
Becca rolls her eyes at him. “If the wind changes, you’ll stay like that,” she smirks. “And there’s me thinking you couldn’t get any uglier.”  
Natasha snickers, quickly covering her mouth with her hand to hide it. Bucky braces himself for all-out war, but Becca must be feeling sorry for him or something as she gives Natasha a wide smile and offers her a plate.  
While they make conversation Bucky heads back to the house, dodging out of the way as Peggy brings out a jug of lemonade, followed by Angie and a tray of glasses.  
“Kids!” Bucky yells up the stairs. “Your Mama’s here.”  
There is a full minute of silence, long enough for Bucky to start thinking they didn’t hear him. He clears his throat, climbing up the first couple of steps as if the extra altitude could make him louder, and sucks in another breath. Before he can expel it in a yell there is a piercing, sustained shriek, and he’s not entirely sure which of the twins it’s coming from.  
Pietro clatters down the stairs first, always the faster of the two, and practically leaps over Bucky in his haste. Bucky dodges out of the way of his flying feet, swinging back just in time to catch Wanda on her way down.  
The pair of them are out the back door and dogpiling on Natasha before Bucky can blink, and he hangs back for a few minutes, watching the three of them clinging to each other and shouting over each other. When Natasha has done exclaiming at how big they’ve both gotten and admired Wanda’s jacket, he slopes out to help lay the table, Angie pausing to squeeze his hand as she passes.

It takes the offer of lemonade and chocolate cake to get the kids sitting down, wedged up against Natasha like bookends. Bucky sits opposite, doing his best to give them space and not hover like a wasp, loud and just as unwelcome. He rests his chin on his hand and listens to the chatter, picking at a square of brownie, not really paying attention until his name is brought up.  
“-mad at Daddy.”  
“Hmn?” Bucky sits up a little. “What did I do now?”  
The twins give him a withering look. It’s bad enough when it’s just one of them but frankly unfair to get it in stereo.   
“Because he sent Steve away,” Wanda says, and Bucky’s heart lurches.  
“Steve?” Natasha glances at him, but there’s nothing territorial there. Huh. “Who’s Steve?”  
“The one from the spell,” Pietro says around a mouthful of brownie, and Bucky gestures for him to eat with his mouth shut.   
Natasha’s expression turns shrewd. “A spell?”  
“Daddy made a spell when he was a boy,” Wanda explains.  
“I wasn’t a boy,” Bucky mutters. He can feel his pulse throbbing between his eyes, as though there was an elastic band snapped around his head, and tries to rub the sensation away.  
“You were sixteen,” Becca chips in, and Natasha looks her way, green eyes shining.  
“Can we not talk about this?” Bucky sighs, but no one seems to be listening to him.  
“Daddy worked a true love spell,” Wanda announces to the whole damn table. “His name is Steve and he has a ship but he calls it a… a soup.”  
Pietro shakes his head. “He said it was a sloosh.”  
“And Daddy sent him away and that’s why we’re mad at him,” Wanda finishes. Pietro nods in agreement. Bucky lets out a quiet sigh and presses his face to the cool wood of the table, feeling the grain against his cheek. Aunt Angie reaches over to brush his hair back, pressing her palm to his forehead until the unpleasant tight sensation subsides.  
“So, Natasha, my dear,” Aunt Peggy says sweetly. “We haven’t seen you since, what was it, the Winter Solstice? What have you been up to?”

Bucky sends a silent thank you to his aunts, and Angie gives his shoulder a quick squeeze before pulling away again. It’s not all that comfortable with his face mashed to the table so Bucky pillows it with his arms instead, watching Natasha as she tells a rambling (and from the sounds of it somewhat redacted) tale of her travels, before ending up in Iowa of all places.  
“You joined the circus?” Wanda exclaims, and Natasha nods proudly.  
“I joined the circus.”  
Bucky listens to the twins rapid-fire round of questions as he pours himself a glass of lemonade, and startles them all when he speaks up. “You’re doing ballet again.”  
The look on Natasha’s face reminds him of why he married her, and for once it doesn’t hurt to see.  
“Yeah,” she says softly. “Ballet and wirework. My stage name is the Black Widow.”  
There is a chorus of ‘oohs’ from the twins. Natasha gave up ballet when she was pregnant, and then with two young kids and work it had been hard for her to get back into it.  
“That’s great, Nat,” Bucky says, gentle and sincere. “I’m proud of you.”  
Natasha smiles, eyes lowered, and Bucky catches the thread of something there. Before he can catch hold of it Aunt Angie claps her hands together. “You must perform for us!”  
The twins quickly join in, pleading wide eyed and loud until Natasha finally relents, and doing a victory lap round the table while she gets to her feet and slips off her shoes.

Bucky barely remembers a thing about ballet, only how much he had loved to watch Natasha dance. He’d stop by the dance school to pick her up after work, slip silently into the practice room and sit on the floor, watching the way she twisted and spun. There was a magic in her movement, a weaving of spells in the turn of her wrist and the arch of her spine, arcane symbols inscribed in the air by her graceful hands. A magic that was not his to divine, nor as it turns out meant for him at all.   
As Natasha dances along the lawn, each movement considered but at ease, exact but not exacting, Bucky can see how much she has changed. It takes time to understand: she is happy. Happy in a way she never was with him.  
Bucky braces himself for a sting of bitterness, some lingering resentment to be crushed and cast away, but there is nothing, only the gasps of delight from their children and demands from Wanda to be taught how to do some moves.

While an impromptu ballet class is conducted on the lawn Bucky and Pietro retreat to the house to make dinner. Pietro is set to work hacking up onions and mushrooms while Bucky starts boiling water for pasta. Bucky isn’t much of a cook, at least not compared to his Aunts, but he’s always been a firm believer in being able to make a couple of things and does his best to make sure the kids do too. Between them they manage a serviceable meal, any culinary shortcomings concealed under a blanket of grated cheese.  
Pietro soaks up the praise as he carries the dish of pasta out to the table, Bucky following after with the biggest bowl he could find and fill with salad. Aunt Peggy is quick to bring out glasses and a couple of bottles of wine. She makes a show of offering some to the twins, who baulk at her taste in full-bodied reds and stick with their lemonade.  
Dinner is a lengthly, loud affair, and when the wine bottles are emptied Peggy brings out more. When the sun drops past the trees Bucky brings out the candles, sending the twins around the garden with his collection of jars wrapped in twists of wire to hang from the trees. The twins had painted the jars, many summers before, flowers and planets and butterflies and rocket ships in bright, bold colours, and a tealight sits in the base of each one. When they are finished Aunt Angie says that the Milky Way has come to visit, and though the twins are a little too old for that kind of talk they don’t complain. 

The Aunts slow dance by candlelight, turning in giddy little circles on the grass. The twins finally crash not long after, falling asleep where they sit around the table, Pietro sprawled across the bench while Wanda is tucked up against Natasha’s side.   
Aunt Peggy looks over, stilling Angie in her arms. “Time for bed, I think.”  
Angie raises her eyebrows. “Fresh.”   
Peggy huffs, too fond to be irritable, walking over to kiss the sleeping twins one by one. “Goodnight, little Witches,” Angie adds, patting Bucky on the shoulder and kissing Becca’s cheek.  
They say their goodnights, and Bucky carefully scoops Pietro up in his arms. “To bed, spaceman,” he murmurs, and Pietro lets out a loud snore.  
Becca goes over to claim Wanda, and for a moment hesitates as Natasha, arm around her daughter’s shoulders, doesn’t move aside.  
“You don’t know where her room is,” Becca whispers, a little too gleeful for Bucky’s liking.  
“Becs,” he murmurs, but Natasha moves her arm aside.  
“_Spokoynoi nochi_,” she whispers, and kisses Wanda’s brow. Becca lifts the sleeping girl into her arms and follows Bucky into the house.

Bucky doesn’t linger putting Pietro to bed, only going so far as pulling off his scuffed trainers and dragging the quilt over him. He wouldn’t appreciate his dad dressing him like a baby, even if that means sleeping in his jeans.  
Bucky pulls the door to and heads downstairs, trying to be as quiet as he can. He stands in the hallway and waits until he hears the sound of Wanda’s door closing.  
“That was unnecessary,” he says quietly as Becca comes down the stairs.  
“Oh, come on-”  
“Becs?” Bucky cuts her off, and feels like an asshole for it. “Be nice.”  
Becca scowls at him. “Be nice? After what she did?”  
“Yes.” He sighs, scrubbing his palms down his face and cradling his chin. “She’s always gonna be their Mama, and they need her.”  
“They have us!” Her voice pitches up a little, and Bucky glances up the stairs, listening for any sounds of stirring. When all is quiet he looks back at his sister.  
“We know what it’s like to grow up without a mother. They shouldn’t have to.”  
Becca has nothing to say to that, her mouth pursed, and Bucky heads outside to clean up.

Natasha is still sitting at the table, nursing her glass of wine. She hasn’t noticed him yet, and Bucky resists the brief urge to sneak back inside before she does. He sits opposite her at the table, snagging the half-empty bottle and refilling his glass. He’s nowhere near drunk but it’s not a talk he wants to have sober.  
“So,” Natasha says slowly, slurring the sibilant a little. She always drank when she was nervous. “She still hates me.”  
“She doesn’t hate you,” Bucky sighs, fingers wrapping around the stem of his glass. “She just…” He shakes his head. “Okay, yeah. She still hates you.”  
Natasha coughs out a laugh, startled and warm. She doesn’t drink her wine, drawing a fingertip along the rim of the glass.  
“Are you taking the kids?” Bucky doesn’t mean to come straight out with it, but the thought has been sitting in his gut like a lead weight since the moment she appeared outside the greenhouse. He’ll fight it if he has to, argue how they are settled here, with their friends and their school and him.  
“Oh god no.” Natasha flicks her fingers, as if casting the very thought aside, and the rush of relief that pulses through Bucky’s chest makes him feel queasy and light-headed.   
He takes a sip of wine, sour and sharp on his tongue, and nods.  
“No, they’re happy here,” Natasha continues, unaware. “I miss them, Christ I miss them, but they’re doing so much better with you than they would with me.”  
“Nat,” Bucky says softly.  
“Don’t you ‘Nat’ me, Barnes,” she huffs. “I’ve never been good at all this.” She waves a hand, encompassing the table and the house and everything within its walls. “This has always been your thing, not mine.”  
Bucky shakes his head, taking another sip of wine. “You did your best.”  
“I was shit at it.” Natasha’s voice pitches up a little and she stops, twisting the stem of her glass and swirling the contents around. “I was disappearing. I could feel it, like I was… transparent. Around the edges.” She pauses to take a sip, buying a few moments. “It was bad enough when I was pregnant, all the doctors and the scans and strangers poking at me. Don’t dance, don’t drink, don’t be anything more than an incubator.” She scowls, and Bucky debates reaching across the table to take her hand before deciding against it. “Being a Mom just took up so much of everything that I stopped being me. And I kind of hated you for it.”  
“Nat,” Bucky murmurs.  
“Oh stop, of course I don’t hate you.” She waves the thought away. “You made it look so easy, the midnight feeds and the teething and getting them to sleep.”  
“It wasn’t,” Bucky shakes his head. “It definitely wasn’t.”  
She is silent for a moment. “You were happy,” she says at last. “And I couldn’t bear it.”  
“Because you weren’t,” Bucky finishes.  
Natasha shrugs. “It was everything I was supposed to want, right? A supportive husband, two beautiful kids.” She scowls again. “And I was suffocating.”

Bucky sits back in his seat. There are plenty of things he could say, and if Becca were still here she’d have more than a few to add. But he’s tired, and his heart aches, and life is too fucking short.  
“You did your best, Nat.” This time he does reach over to clasp her hand in his. “You did good. Your kids are smart, and funny, and kind. They know you love them, and they are always gonna love you. That’s all that really matters.”  
She closes her eyes, mouth drawing into a tight line, and Bucky gives her hand a squeeze. “So when are you gonna tell me about this guy?”  
In spite of the seriousness of the last few moments Bucky bursts out laughing when her eyes snap open.  
“_Koldun_,” she hisses, and Bucky laughs even harder, tension finally giving way to relief.  
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” He pours them both more wine while Natasha mutters under her breath. “You’ve met someone, and you want me to give the okay before he meets the kids.”  
Natasha reaches for her purse, and for a moment Bucky thinks that she’s bailing, off to spend the night in her car or on the couch depending on how mad she is. But instead of collecting up her things and storming off, she pulls out a flyer and hands it over.  
It’s a little crumpled from being shoved into her purse, and Bucky smooths it out on the table. He sees Natasha in the picture first, dressed in a tight black costume with a flash of red on the chest. She stands with her arms raised, elbows bent, a length of fine wire taut between her hands. Standing with his back to her is a man, blond and rugged, wearing a costume that looks like motorcycle leathers daubed in purple. He holds a bow nocked with an arrow, string drawn taut and aimed at some point in the distance.  
“His name’s Clint.” Natasha almost stumbles over the name. It’s sweet, how in love she is.  
“A sharpshooter?”  
“We’ve been working on a show together.” Bucky can easily join the dots, an archer and a spider. One to set the wires and the other to scale them. “It’s been something of a hit. Enough that we’ve been offered a residence at Coney Island.”  
Bucky sits up a little straighter. “You’re coming back to New York?”  
“Yeah.” The grip on her wine glass tightens. “If that’s okay?”  
“Are you kidding me?” Bucky laughs. “That’s great. Can we come watch the show?”

It’s the right thing to say. Natasha relaxes instantly, sitting back with her wine and actually talking to him for the first time in what feels like forever. It spills out of her in a flood; life on the road, the other performers she works with, the places she has been. Of course the second Bucky thinks he’s in the clear and starts to relax, she pounces.  
“So tell me about this Steve?”   
Nat sits forward, conspiratorial, and Bucky withdraws. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”  
“Oh, come on, I told you about Clint.”  
“Because you wanted to,” Bucky points out. “I don’t.”  
“Wanda kept his card, you know. It’s got a number on there, you could maybe call him.”  
Of course she has. She’s probably googled him too, damnit. “I sent him away.”  
“Well then you’re an idiot,” Natasha huffs. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a guy who doesn’t run at the mention of kids? And this one made them pancakes?”  
“I sent him away,” Bucky says through gritted teeth. “He’s not coming back.”  
“And say you find a guy who likes you and your kids? You think it’s easy getting kids to like them back? I am freaking out right now that this thing with Clint is gonna crash and burn because our kids don’t like him.”  
“If you love him, they’ll like him,” Bucky says.  
“And they really like Steve.”  
“Natasha,” Bucky cuts her off. “I made him leave.”  
Natasha opens her mouth to argue, and Bucky had forgotten what fighting with her was like. You might as well argue with stone. Bucky raises his eyebrows, eyes wide, and after a moment she finally catches his meaning.  
“Oh,” she says softly, followed by a much sharper “Oh!”  
“Yeah.”  
“You mean…”  
“Yup.” Bucky finishes his wine in one long swallow. “Told him to get out and never come back.”  
Natasha seems to deflate a little, slumping back in her seat. “I thought you didn’t do the whole forcing your will, non-consensual…” She wiggles her fingers, a cartoon Witch casting a spell. “Thing.”  
Bucky rubs his eyes. Steve would not have moved. He would have stood his ground and argued his case and he would have stayed. So Bucky had cast him out, stripped him of his agency for the handful of awful, gut-wrenching minutes it took to make him leave, and if Bucky lives to be a thousand he will not forgive himself.  
_If he stayed he would die_.

Bucky rises to his feet, and slowly walks around the garden, blowing out the tealights hanging from the trees. He leaves one for Natasha, to light the way back to the house, and leaves the glasses for the morning. He’s tired, tired to his bones, and the ache in his chest is starting to feel familiar.  
“I’ll make up a bed in the spare room,” he says, not meeting Natasha’s eye. “You’ll stay for breakfast?”  
“Yeah.” Natasha reaches for him as he passes, grasping his hand in hers, offering what comfort she can. “I’d like that.”  
“Next time give us some notice,” Bucky says, her fingers tight around his. “Bring Clint with you, Pietro says we need more guys around here.”  
He gives her hand a last squeeze and turns for the house.  
“Bucky?” Natasha calls after him. “Are you happy?”  
Bucky doesn’t answer. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he says instead. “Goodnight.”  
There are moths circling the porch light, battering themselves against the bulb, the moon too far to reach.


	5. Forget-me-not

Bucky hammers on the front door, heart pounding in his ears. The pick-up probably won’t last the drive back to Brooklyn, but he’ll swim if he has to. He tore up the road on the way out here, wheels skidding and grinding into the submerged track, ploughing up muddy water. He couldn’t wait. He couldn’t stand idly at the shore and wait for the tide, not with his head screaming and his heart was in pieces, so he’d followed the road by memory more than sight.   
Later he will feel ashamed for being so reckless, for putting his life at stake for the sake of an hour’s wait. Right now if he believed in miracles he’d say that was what kept him from being swept out to sea, but Bucky doesn’t believe in miracles. The curse will wring every last miserable year of life out of him, no matter what he does.  
“Peggy!” He yells at the door, wood solid and implacable against the battering of his fists. “Peggy, what did you do?”  
The door finally opens, and for the first time in his life the sight of his Aunts doesn’t bring Bucky comfort. Peggy regards him with concern, Angie quick to reach out to him.  
“Bucky, darlin’,” Angie gasps, coming down the steps towards him. She cradles his face in her hands, fingers delicate and papery. “What’s happened? Where are the twins?”  
The twins are with the neighbour across the hall, the one with the daughter a year or so older, and are most likely watching Disney movies. But Bucky doesn’t tell the Aunts that, pushing past Angie and glowering up at Peggy on the top step.   
He was angry when he climbed into the pick-up, furious when he left New York city. With nothing but miles to travel and time to put two and two together, the rage has tempered into something bitter and incandescent.  
“The curse was never broken,” Bucky hisses. “It was never love.”

It is Angie who breaks, hand cupping her mouth as if to muffle the sobs. “I’m sorry,” she gasps between ragged breaths.   
Peggy barely moves, but he can feel the way she changes, the way she shifts from implacable as granite to brittle and fragile as chalk. And Bucky could make her crumble. He’s furious, desperate for someone to blame as his marriage, as his life, falls apart.  
“We never thought…” Peggy’s words seem odd, stilted, as though she were speaking around shards of glass. “When we cast the spell…”  
The fire burning in Bucky’s gut stutters and dies. From one moment to the next the bitter rage is swallowed by the ocean. Seawater seems to press down on him, dousing the rage and crushing his spine, and he has never felt so cold.  
“What?” Bucky whispers.  
“You wanted to be happy,” Angie says, gripping his arm. “You wanted to be…”  
“Normal,” Peggy finishes, her mouth twisting in distaste. There are other words there, echoes of the bitter exchanges over the dinner table in the weeks before Natasha wandered into his life.

Bucky pulls out of Angie’s hold. “No,” he says, uncertain at first, and then more emphatically. “No.”  
“Bucky,” Angie reaches out to him again, and Bucky flinches away.  
“You cast a spell on me?” Everything Nat had said about feeling lost, about not even knowing why she married him, begins to make a horrible kind of sense. “You cast a spell on Natasha?”  
“You just needed a little push,” Angie says. “And you wanted-”  
“I didn’t want this,” Bucky snarls. “I didn’t want someone to be forced into-”  
“It wasn’t forced,” Peggy cuts him short. “Natasha had her own reasons, an absent father, a sense of stability. Bad reasons but people marry for less every day.”  
“But she didn’t love me.” It burns Bucky’s throat to say it, like swallowing bile.  
“Oh for crying out loud,” Peggy snaps. “You don’t have to be in love to be in a relationship.”  
“I do!” Bucky snaps back.  
He would have borne Nat not loving him. If she had stayed he would have loved her enough for both of them, and she would never have to die.   
_Stupid_.   
They would have been miserable, and love would have become hate. He would never put the twins in the middle of that, no matter what it cost him.

Bucky shakes his head again, turning his back on the Aunts and stumbling down the path to where his pick-up waits. He has to get back to the twins, has to pick up the pieces of his life and make what’s left into something whole. Where will they live? Who will watch the kids when he’s at work?   
“Bucky,” Peggy calls after him. Peggy who he loved. Peggy who he trusted. “Come home.”  
She follows him down the path, Angie at her side, and Bucky can see the years ahead of them like a road winding through the waves. Another generation of Barnes drawn back to the island.  
“No,” he says, teeth bared. “My children will never do magic.”  
“Oh, don’t be a hypocrite,” Peggy snorts.   
Angie flinches a little at her brisk tone, and tries to soften the blow. “Children need magic,” she reminds him, the way she had done years before. “You know that, sweetheart.”  
Bucky doesn’t answer, climbing into the pick-up and starting the engine. He needs to get back to his kids. He needs to explain why their Mama has gone.  
He lets his shoulders drop, gripping the steering wheel as his throat burns. He’ll hand in his notice in the morning, and they’ll spend the day packing.  
They are just children, they need a home, a loving family around them.  
They need magic.

~⛤~

There should be some kind of law, Bucky considers while slumped at the counter, banning the full hour between 2pm and 3pm. In the summer it’s too hot to think, the air pungent and syrupy. In the winter closing time is both too far away and not far enough to get anything useful done.   
Bucky rubs his hand over his face, sighing. If he were to voice this opinion Luis would just tell him it’s a dip in his blood sugar and make him eat one of those power bars, the ones that taste like compressed sand coated in something vaguely resembling chocolate. So Bucky keeps his mouth shut and takes a notebook over to the herbs to do a stock check.  
The herbs sell well enough throughout the year, but in the first flush of summer it’s hard to keep up with demand. People see a little terracotta pot of basil or cilantro and get _ideas_. Suddenly they’re living out some repressed fantasy of being a great chef, scattering torn leaves over a plate of pasta like they’re… Bucky blanks on a suitable name. One of those shouty English guys with high blood pressure and fucked up priorities. The point is a pot of herbs gives them a push, that little bit of motivation to go home and cook something from scratch, even if it’s something as simple as pasta and a can of crushed tomatoes. Their day will be a little better for it, and they’ll feel good about themselves. And okay, maybe the idea won’t stick, and they’ll go back to their microwave meals and takeout, but that’s okay. The main thing is they’ll have tried.  
While Bucky is passive, setting out the herbs and leaving the rest to fate, or synchronicity, or whatever, Luis is more… well, he’s Luis. He brings in chili plants, bushy little things covered in clusters of fruits in every colour Bucky knows. He brings little pots of herbs that Bucky won’t find in his books, but he has written out everything Luis has told him in the back pages in his neatest handwriting. Huacatay, Papalo, Quillquiña, Pipicha; Strange, musical words that roll off his tongue like spells. A passerby who even looks at one will get an effusive monologue on their use and a recipe card to take home.   
Bucky has the full set, and wouldn’t dare make refried beans without a handful of Papalo. Aunt Peggy would never let him hear the end of it.

The mailman raps his knuckles on the doorframe before coming in, and strides over to the counter where Luis is working on a commission.  
“Hey, Luis.” He drops a couple of catalogues and letters on the counter and offers up his knuckles.   
Luis puts down his work and obliges him, tapping their fists together. “What up, bro?”  
The two fall into conversation, and Bucky carefully doesn’t listen. Every so often Bucky will suggests to Luis that space could be made out back for private consultations, that maybe business could be done at a moderate sized desk over a cup of coffee, but so far hasn’t gotten the idea to stick. At some point he’ll stop suggesting and get on with it, pick a few office items from the IKEA catalogue and maybe even get a sign for the door. Until then he’ll keep his head down and try to give Luis and whoever he’s tending to privacy where he can.  
The transaction concluded, the postman heads off to finish his route, and Bucky stalks over to the cash register before Luis can go putting money that should be in his pocket where it doesn’t belong.   
Luis puts up a token fight, just enough for a show, and gets on with going through the mail while Bucky continues with the stocktake.

“Hey, Buck?” Luis’ voice pitches up a little, which can only mean he’s looking through one of those retail furniture catalogues.   
“No,” Bucky says without looking up. You buy a couple of baskets and they never let you forget it. “We don’t need it.”  
“Aww, come on!” Luis wheedles. “Look at these things. They got, like, fruit crates. Look at these fruit crates, ain’t they the cutest thing you ever seen?”  
Bucky looks at the page he’s holding up. Yes, it looks very cute, the photo is well-lit and the photographer has a good eye for colour and composition. But he would bet his shoes that no fruit has ever been stored in the crates, nor apples in the similarly charming woven baskets, or potatoes in the hessian sacks.   
“Very nice,” he concedes. “Still don’t need them.”  
“And look at this!” Luis exclaims, turning the page to show a wooden cart with two large, black iron wheels. “A market cart, ain’t that adorable? Can you imagine all our little plant pots on there?”  
Bucky can imagine it, and a little too readily for his liking. “How much is it?”  
“Lemme see, five hun-” He stops, bringing the catalogue right up to his nose to double check. “Five hundred dollars?! Damn.”  
Bucky goes back to his notebook, listening as Luis reads through the listings and gently reminding him to check the prices when he gets too excited. At least it’s not the catalogue they get every quarter for tiny gift boxes and bags, Bucky actually needs to order from that and Luis tends to get excitable when left alone with it. Bucky has no idea why he thinks they need little cloth pouches with bumblebees printed all over them, but there’s a box of fifty or so under the counter now.  
“Uh. Boss?”

Bucky makes a final note in his pad and looks up, ready to point out how little they need individual wooden wine boxes, no matter how much red velvet lining there is inside.   
But Luis is holding up a letter. It’s still sealed, and though Bucky doesn’t recognise the handwriting it still sends an odd chill down his spine.  
“It’s from Steve,” Luis says.  
For a moment Bucky hesitates, torn between snatching it out of Luis’ hand and telling him to throw it in the trash.  
“You want me to open it?” Luis asks.  
“No.” The word comes out before Luis has finished speaking, before Bucky has a chance to think. Luis, for once, doesn’t say a word, just holds out the envelope with a knowing look. Bucky snatches it and walks a few paces across the shop floor, turning his back to Luis in a semblance of privacy as he rips his index finger through the envelope. Inside is a single sheet of paper, a sparse paragraph of type and the digital scrawl of a signature.

_To whom it may concern,_

_On the night of June 7th Brock Rumlow was involved in a vehicle collision in Washington, DC. The coroner has declared the cause of death as accidental, and there will be no further investigations._

_Steven G. Rogers, Special Investigator._

Bucky reads the letter twice before flipping it over and checking the back.  
“That’s it?” he mutters to himself, opening up the envelope to check that he hasn’t missed anything.  
“I don’t think he’s in there, Bucko,” Luis says gently.  
Bucky looks up sharply, the letter crumpling in his hand. Is this it? Is a cold, impersonal and badly written letter all he gets?  
A sudden image comes to his mind, of Steve hunched over a legal pad, tearing off another page and screwing it into a ball. He pushes the thought away, looking down at the letter again. Of course it’s cold. Of course it’s distant. What else could he have said?  
“What would you do?” Bucky asks, and Luis laughs.  
“What wouldn’t I do, bro?” he grins, head tilted to one side. Waiting for Bucky to catch up.

*

When it comes down to it, magic is not complicated.  
Oh sure, there are people who will tell you that you need a whole bunch of stuff to perform spells. That you need a sacred space, an altar, a silver chalice and a pile of crap designed to part the stupid from their money.  
You don’t need any of that. You don’t need ceremonial swords or velvet robes and you _definitely_ don’t need to dance naked under the full moon. Funny how it’s only middle-aged men who say that magic needs a lot of naked girls.  
The only thing you need is _need_. An intention. A desire so clear and absolute that it fills your veins like sunlight, it makes you lift your hands to the sky and say _Please. Please let me have this._  
There is a price, there is always a price. But it’s one you’ve been paying all your life, and at some point you have to trust that you’ve earned enough credit.

The flower Bucky picks isn’t special. It isn’t one from his Aunt’s spellbooks chosen for its magical properties or planetary associations. It isn’t considered powerful or baneful. A resilient little thing growing up through the sidewalk. He picks it because it is blue, and because its five petals form a star.  
Bucky holds the flower up to the sea. There are no candles burning, no curls of incense perfuming the air. There is only Bucky and his hands and his heart. The only spell he utters is ‘please’ as the wind lifts the flower from his open hand, carrying it up and out of sight.  
Bucky watches the waves, letting his lungs fill with sea air, salt and crisp, and breathes out.  
Saltwater is a cure for everything they say. Maybe even this.

*

“Dad?”  
Pietro balances on top of the lumber pile stacked by the water’s edge, peering dubiously down at his father, wading about in the shallows.  
“Yeah?” Bucky glances up, tugging off his gloves so he can refasten his ponytail. His hair has worked its way loose during the morning, and he keeps getting hair in his mouth.  
Pietro frowns at the wooden posts embedded in the dirt, and then at his father clinging to them. “Aunt Peggy said I should come check on you,” he says, kicking at one of the ridged planks and sending a bag of nails spilling on the dirt. “Make sure you’ve not been swept out to sea.”  
“Well,” Bucky says, pulling his gloves back on. “I’ve not.”  
Bucky is a strong swimmer, but his sense of self-preservation means he’s also got a length of rope leading from his belt to the sturdiest of the posts.  
“Yeah, I see that.” Pietro hops down from the pile and crouches on a rock overlooking the sea. He doesn’t sit, the boy doesn’t stay still long enough to bother. He watches Bucky clamber up onto land and drag one of the lengths of wood over to the posts, checking and double checking its position before nailing one end in place. “What are you doing?”  
Bucky grabs another nail from where they ended up in the dirt and gestures with his hammer to a spirit level near the boy’s feet. “Hand me that, will you?”  
Pietro picks it up and brings it over, looking nonplussed as Bucky has him balance it on the plank and yell when the bubble is in the middle of the little window. At his shout Bucky hammers in the nail.

“Dad?” Pietro says again, a little louder, and Bucky walks over to get another plank.  
“I’m building a jetty,” he explains. “Can you get the other end?”  
Pietro obliges, even though Bucky doesn’t really need the help. That’s not the point though, not really.  
“What, like for boats and stuff?”  
“Yeah,” Bucky nods, getting the plank in position before handing over the hammer and letting Pietro drive in the next nail. “You know there used to be a proper dock on this island? Boats used to come from the mainland, bringing food and supplies. There wasn’t a road back then, but they could still come and go as they pleased.”  
Pietro checks the spirit level and hammers in another nail, brow tight. “But that was the other side of the island,” he says slowly. “The mainland is that way. Out here is just…” He looks out at the ocean. On a clear day you can see Long Island across the sound, at night the streetlights are a distant haze on the horizon. “Nothing. It’s just ocean.”  
Bucky straightens up, following his son’s gaze as he rests his hands on his hips, trying to pull his spine back into shape. He’d been up with the sun, digging in the dirt with mattock and pickaxe to get the last posts in place and secured with some kind of fast drying cement Luis had recommended. He’s tired and sore but feels good, better than he has in months.  
“What does your Aunt Peggy say about spells?” he asks, hefting up one end of another plank.  
Pietro gives him a dubious look before taking up the other end. “Start with the mundane.”  
“And what does that mean?” Bucky asks, dragging the plank over to the jetty.  
“Uh.” Pietro picks up the spirit level, setting it on the plank while Bucky adjusts the height. “Magic won’t do the heavy lifting, I guess? Like if you want to do well in a test you gotta revise. If you don’t want to get sick you gotta-” he rolls his eyes. “-take vitamins, I guess.”  
“That’s right,” Bucky smiles, holding up the hammer. “That’s what I’m doing here.”  
“You are?”

Bucky waits. He waits for the questions, the ones he doesn’t have the words to answer, not just yet. He waits for the arguments, for his tangled thoughts to be picked apart and held up to the light.   
Of all the things you are told when having children, no one warns you about how brutal they are in their honesty. How every action and inaction is met with the scalpel blade question of why.  
Pietro shrugs, picking up another nail from the pile. “Okay then,” he says, and says nothing more.  
It’s as close to a blessing as Bucky can ask for, and they get back to work. 

By the time the Aunts call them in for dinner they are more or less finished, the sturdy little jetty striking out into the ocean. The Aunts take turns walking up and down the decking, Aunt Angie tapping her feet just to hear the hollow sound it makes. Peggy digs her heels into the thick grooves cut into the decking, rattling out questions that Pietro answers easily.   
“We need a Boathouse,” she says finally, glancing Bucky’s way. “This is good for picking up and dropping off, but if you wanted someone to stay…”  
Aunt Angie grins, casting around for a suitable spot. Before Bucky can say a word she points out a natural slipway a little to their left, a gentle slope from land into sea. “There would be perfect, wouldn’t it, Pegs?”  
Peggy agrees, describing a Boathouse to a suddenly very interested Pietro.   
Bucky rests his hands on his hips, doing his best to glare at the three of them. Angie slips her hand around the crook of his elbow, squeezing gently.   
“Lavender bath salts, I think,” she says with a smile. “Oh, don’t you scowl at me, young man! There’s nothing wrong with smelling like a florist. We’ll add a dash of Juniper then, maybe a little Rosemary.” She pinches his cheek. “That should fix you right up.”  
“Thank you, Angie,” Bucky murmurs, and lets her lead him back to the house.

*

Time moves as it always must, and while Bucky’s back is turned a week bleeds into a month.  
The Boathouse ends up being much easier to build than the deck - not being hip deep in the ocean but on solid ground makes something of a difference. After a very public debate in the town’s only hardware store the twins decide to paint the finished building in blue and white. Bucky keeps his mouth shut and paints what he’s told in the colours he’s told, and by the time they are finished he has to admit it looks good. More than good. Aunt Peggy puts up a life ring on the wall, a bold splash of red alongside the coils of rope and muted orange life jackets.  
Pretty as it looks, it is still empty, though Bucky doesn’t let himself dwell on that.

He is in the bathroom, scrubbing the last smudges of drying paint from under his nails when company arrives. His heart trips and stutters, and he has to force himself not to run down the stairs to get to the door first. He waits on the landing, drying his hands with a towel, while Aunt Angie answers the door.  
His heart drops like a stone, thunking into the pit of his stomach like a lead weight. It’s not Steve, but Natasha. She hovers in the doorway, suddenly shy, and catches sight of Bucky on the stairs.  
“Hey!” he calls, coming down to greet her. “Everything okay?”  
Natasha nods, glancing around. “You said…” She pauses, and then very deliberately steps to the side, revealing someone hovering just out of sight, hunched up against the doorframe. “This is Clint.”

Clint is not what Bucky had expected. He doesn’t look like a showman, a stage performer desperate for the limelight. If anything he looks like a roustabout, someone in the background who sets up the stage rather than performs on it.  
He is quiet. Quiet like a dog that’s been kicked too often and too hard. His hair is the colour of damp sand, tufted up in every direction, and Bucky knows, deep in his gut, that it’s from a nervous habit. That he tugs and he twists at his hair because it’s the only place that doesn’t bruise.  
“Clint,” Bucky murmurs, and if there is a thread weaving through the word, a spell of comfort and assurance, well no one needs to know. “It’s good to meet you.”  
Bucky reaches out to shake his hand. His grip is firm and warm, and Bucky can feel the pulse steady in his veins, feel the clench and release of his wide open heart.  
“Hey, Man,” Clint replies, still wary. It won’t last, Bucky will make sure of that.  
“Nat’s told us all about you,” Bucky says, his grip loose enough that Clint can pull away when he wants to. “The kids can’t wait to meet you.”  
He looks startled, blue eyes widening. “Yeah?”  
By way of answer Bucky tips his head back and yells at the ceiling. “Kids! Your Mama’s here!”  
There is a loud thump from upstairs, followed by a shriek. Pietro appears at the top of the stairs, silver hair hanging around him like a halo. “Mama?”  
“And she brought Clint this time!” Bucky yells.  
Pietro lets out an ear-splitting whoop, just as the door to Wanda’s bedroom bursts open, and the pair of them come clattering down the stairs.  
“You might wanna brace yourself,” Bucky says to Clint with a grin, and steps out of the way as the twins plough into him.  
“Are you really in the circus?”  
“Do you tame lions? I bet you can, like, put your head in a lion’s mouth.”  
“How tall are you?”  
“What does a lion’s breath smell like? Is it really gross? I bet it’s really gross.”  
“Are you a clown? Can you juggle?”

Bucky backs off, but he doesn’t leave. He stands to one side, one hand on Aunt Angie's arm, and waits to see what happens. Becca comes down the stairs, drawn to the clamour, and Aunt Peggy steps out of the kitchen to see what’s going on.  
Just at the moment when Bucky thinks he’ll have to step in, hustle the kids into the kitchen and ply them with chocolate cake while Clint recuperates, the man suddenly rallies.  
“Yes, I have put my head in a lion’s mouth. It smells like rotten hamburger!”  
The twins fall silent, eyes wide, and Pietro looks like all his birthdays have come at once. “Disgusting,” he whispers delightedly.  
“And I’m not a clown.” Clint reaches down to grab something he’d hidden in the foxgloves by the door, and pulls out a longbow. “I’m a sharpshooter.”  
The twins gasp at the sight of the bow, and Bucky wonders how long it’ll be before they start calling Clint Robin Hood.  
Natasha, seeing her chance, snags both the kids and pulls them into her arms, giving them a firm hug. She lets go, putting a hand on each of their shoulders, and leans in to whisper in their ears. “Maybe he’ll give us a demonstration, if you ask nicely?”  
The twins take half a second to decide, bouncing up and down and shouting ‘Please!’ at the top of their lungs, until Clint takes a step back, buffeted by their combined enthusiasm.  
“Okay then,” Bucky finally intervenes, shepherding them all out to the garden. “Let’s go find a decent spot on the grass for the show.”  
“Far away from the windows,” Aunt Angie calls after them.

There is a clearing at the furthest edge of the garden, a gap in the trees overlooking the Atlantic, and Clint quickly gets himself set up. He spends a few minutes walking back and forth before planting himself with his back to the sun and the sea before him. Any arrows that he overshoots will end up in the ocean, and not the house.  
While Clint sets up the twins circle him, nodding vigorously as he runs through a long list of things they absolutely will not do if they want to handle a bow. Bucky listens along, quelling any complaints with a few well-chosen words, and by the time the safety talk is finished Natasha is walking across the garden to join them. Becca is with her, no doubt curious to get a closer look at the new guy, and between them they are carrying a brightly coloured target.   
Clint gives Becca a wary smile before directing them to his chosen spot, and Natasha quickly sets it up.  
“Are we shooting a target?” Pietro asks, bouncing around in his excitement.  
“What’s a target?” Clint shakes his head. “This is called a boss. It’s made of straw packed real tight.”  
“Why’s it called a boss?” Wanda asks, and Clint grins at her.  
“You’ll find out when you get your first summer job,” he says, shoving a handful of arrows into the dirt.   
Bucky snorts, then tries to cover it up with a cough. Clint flashes him a quick grin, checking for his nod before calling the twins closer.  
“This here is a bracer,” he explains, strapping on a leather arm guard. “Keeps you from getting hurt by the arrows.”   
He pulls one of the arrows from the dirt and holds it up, naming each part and waiting for the twins to repeat it back to him before continuing. Bucky listens, ostensibly to keep watch over the kids, but finds himself drawn into the lesson. Clint has a knack for getting information across quickly and clearly, and his love for the subject shines through when he speaks. He has the twins step back, and slowly talks through the nocking of the arrow and the drawing of the bow. He stands with his back straight and his shoulders taut, drawing back the bowstring as he sights the target.  
Bucky misses the moment he releases the arrow. It’s there one second and the next it’s not, shuddering in the center of the target. The twins whoop and clap, and before they can start fighting over who gets to go first, Clint points to Pietro. “C’mon, hotshot. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Pietro lets off half a dozen arrows before Wanda has her turn. Where her brother is fast, letting the arrows fly as soon as the bowstring is taut, she is more measured. Her arm trembles with tension as she holds the string taut, not flinching when Clint lays a guiding hand on her elbow, adjusting her form and whispering in her ear. Each arrow finds its mark, in a cluster around the bullseye like a constellation, and when her turn is over Clint throws his arm around her shoulder and gives her a proud little shake.  
Bucky holds his hands up when he’s offered a turn, shaking his head as he backs away. Becca is quick to take his place, and Bucky figures that means that it’s safe enough to retreat gracefully.  
He has work to get on with, and heads over to the greenhouse. Through the tinted glass he can see the archers at play, glancing up from his pots and his compost when a cheer rises up to see one of the twins being congratulated on a good shot.

Before his work is done Aunt Peggy calls him to help set the garden table for dinner. Bucky looks over his pots and herbs, and figures he can call it a day. He heads over to the kitchen, slipping past Angie presiding over the stove, and washes his hands in the sink. Aunt Peggy has been busy as well, making up a jug of lemonade for the kids and some of what looks suspiciously like sangria for the adults.   
“Take these out, would you?” she says brightly, setting out some glasses on a tray.  
Bucky picks up one of the jugs and takes a wary sniff. The mix of red wine and brandy is strong enough to make him wince, but the jug is also crammed with macerated strawberries and cherries, so at least Becca will get a bit of fruit in her diet.  
“You trying to kill me, Pegs?” he asks, picking up a second jug just as big as the first.  
“We’re being convivial,” she retorts, a troublemaker gleam in her eye.  
Bucky knows better than to question her, and takes the jugs out to the garden, putting them in a line down the center of the table while Peggy brings out extra chairs. Bucky carries them the rest of the way, placing them around the table as Peggy brings out the glasses.  
“Peggy, there are nine chairs?” Bucky says absently, counting the place settings.  
“Yes, dear,” Peggy says absently.  
Bucky frowns at her. “But there are eight of us.”  
“Yes, dear.” Peggy sets down the ninth glass decisively, and goes back inside for the cutlery.  
Bucky lingers by the extra seat at the table, wondering what the Aunts know that he doesn’t.

By the time they’re done the table is groaning under the weight of food, fresh bread and platters of cheese jostled up against bowls of pasta and salad. Bucky has already had his knuckles slapped for picking candied pecans out of the goats cheese, but that doesn’t stop him from circling the table like a shark scenting blood.  
“Hey!” Aunt Angie brandishes a wooden spoon at him. “Enough of that! Go call everyone to dinner. Scoot!”  
Bucky snags another pecan, dodging out of range, and jogs across the garden. The archery class has come to an end, Clint packing up the equipment while the twins stare out to sea, pointing something out to Becca.  
“Dad!” Wanda shouts, waving for Bucky to join them. “Look!”  
Pietro points out to a sailing boat bobbing on the water, a single sail taut in the breeze. “Is it a pirate ship?” he asks, and Bucky tilts his head to one side, watching as the ship makes its way towards them.  
There is the strangest sensation in his chest, as though a fine thread has gotten tangled in his ribs. It tugs at him, every time the boat crests a wave. It tugs and snags and twists, but it doesn’t hurt, as though on the end of the string there was a balloon, drawing his heart towards the sun.  
“Your Aunt says to go get washed up,” Bucky says, and his voice seems far away. “Time for dinner.”  
The twins grumble, but relent quickly, much too quickly, and lead Clint and Natasha back to the house to clean up. Becca lingers for a moment, watching Bucky as he stares out to sea with a smile.

Bucky moves without thinking about it, one foot in front of the other until he is down by the jetty. He doesn’t need to check, to walk out to the furthest edge of the jetty and try to catch a glimpse of the sailor. He knows. He _knows._  
He can hear movement behind him, a rustle in the trees, but doesn’t turn away from the approaching boat. It will be the Aunts, or the twins. Hell, it could be the entire town and he wouldn’t look.  
The boat pulls up alongside the jetty, the sails lowered, and Steve stands on the prow, a coil of rope in his hands.  
“Hi,” he says, shy and hopeful.  
“Hey,” Bucky says back, as if people come sailing to the island every day. “You want to throw me that?”  
Steve looks down at the rope in his hands, as if only just noticing that it’s there. He laughs, self-conscious, and throws it to Bucky, who catches it easily and loops it around one the posts along the jetty, pulling it taut.  
Steve climbs up onto the little boardwalk, and the tangle of thread around Bucky’s ribs tightens, robbing him of breath as Steve ties a second rope to the jetty.  
He straightens up, wiping his hands on his pants, uncertain of what to say now he’s here.  
“I told you to leave,” Bucky says, and curses his idiot tongue as soon as the words leave his mouth.  
“Yeah,” Steve nods. His mouth twists up a little, and there will be a long talk about that, somewhere in the near future. A talk about spells and seawater as they walk along the causeway to the mainland and back again, each step binding and unbinding.

“If you stay here, you’ll die.”  
It has to be said. Bucky hates how the words taste on his tongue.  
“No I won’t.”  
Steve Rogers is no Witch. There is no magic flowing through his veins, only saltwater and sunlight. As steadfast and constant as the waves against the shore, and Bucky loves him.  
Steve reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dried little scrap of blue. A flower. “I wished for you too,” he says gently.  
Bucky’s throat tightens, the tangle in his ribs straining, about to break, as Steve comes towards him.  
“Curses only have power if you believe in them,” Steve whispers, pressing the flower into Bucky’s hand. “And I don’t.”  
Bucky draws in a shallow, painful breath, tangled cords fraying and giving way. The next breath comes a little easier, filling his lungs with salt.  
He laughs, eye prickling. “Okay,” he gasps, pressing their hands together, palm to palm, the withered little flower that travelled so far crushed in their joined grip.   
“Okay,” he whispers, as Steve leans into him, and it takes so little effort to kiss him Bucky wonders why it has taken him so long to do it.

There is a loud cheer behind them, and Bucky lets out a quiet groan against Steve’s mouth that has nothing to do with pleasure, and looks over his shoulder. Steve follows his gaze, taking in the Aunts standing by the pine trees and the twins down on the rocks. Becca is holding a rose from the garden, and she twists off a handful of velvety red petals and throws them his way.  
“Oh, come on!” Bucky hisses, scraps of red catching in his hair and Steve’s jacket. Becca throws another handful at his face. He spits out the petals that land in his mouth before turning back to Steve.  
Any sensible person would climb back into his pirate ship and sail away as fast as the wind could carry him. But Steve doesn’t run, and instead picks a rose petal from the folds of his jacket, rubbing the velvet between finger and thumb.  
“So, uh.” Bucky gestures to the garden, to his family, to his island. “Do you want to stay for dinner?”  
“Do you want to stay forever?” Aunt Angie shouts.  
Steve laughs, a blush rising up his cheeks as Bucky glowers at their audience.  
“Let’s start with dinner,” Steve suggests, clearing his throat. “See where we go from there?”

His hand fits in Bucky’s like it was made to lie there, as though their fingers were cut from the same scrap of cloth, rejoined at last.


End file.
